


Sunrise and Sunset

by pixie_rings



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anal Sex, Angel/Demon AU, Bartender AU, Demon!Jack, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Gay Bar, Idol/Fan AU, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mistletoe, Rimming, Sex Pollen, Snowed In, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, angel!Aster, angel!Sandy, angel!Tooth, demon!Pitch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:25:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1698182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixie_rings/pseuds/pixie_rings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirty fandom cliché fics, all JackRabbit.</p><p>You have been warned.</p><p>1. Coffeeshop AU<br/>2. Idol/Fan<br/>3. Angel/Demon AU<br/>4. Bartender AU<br/>5. Stuck Someplace Together in Winter<br/>6. Sex Pollen AU<br/>7. Matching Soulmate Markings<br/>8. Meet in a Dream<br/>9. Mistletoe</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coffeeshop AU

“Can't just do a plain bloody _coffee_ , can you?”

Jack laughs, leaning on the counter and waiting for the guy to place his order. He complains about this almost every day, but Jack doesn't care. His day is boring enough as it is (the Starbucks two blocks over and the Costa three streets down make sure that Noctiluca Coffee remains the universal centre of ennui), and there's nothing like a hot Australian tsundere to make it just that little bit _interesting_. Not just because of the nice ass, either.

“How about, then,” Jack suggests, “I make you a surprise?”

The Australian – whose name Jack does not yet know – eyes him suspiciously. “I barely trust you not to poison me as it is,” he grumbles. “Get me something with caramel in it. No chocolate.”

“One caramel mocha latte coming right up!” Jack announces brightly, straightening up with a bit of a hop and turning on his heel to set the machine up. He's good at making weird stuff like this. Some of the things on the carefully written price board above their heads are his own concoctions Katherine seemed particularly pleased with.

He presents the Australian his drink with a bow and a grin. Dat Accent takes it, gives Jack his best 'I don't trust you' look and sips. He perks up a little, Jack can see it, but he knows he'll never admit it.

“Tastes like crap,” he says simply, but he leaves a full pound tip in the little owl-shaped pot on the counter.

_Tsun tsun tsun,_ thinks Jack.

.

Jack hasn't ever had much luck with dating. He's only actually ever had one date, back in America, and it turns out Elsa was trying to use him as a beard as much as he was trying to use her. They'd laughed about it afterwards, but their friendship and skating partnership had never truly recovered as it should have.

Jack wonders whether it would go any better with Hot Aussie, but that's not much use if he doesn't even know Hot Aussie's name.

That's today's objective: The Name.

He muses over his possibilities and potential plans as he pedals to work. He could ask slyly if Hot Aussie would ever like to order ahead, but that would also mean less time spent with the actual man himself every day. Jack isn't into that idea much at all. He could write his own name on the side of the cup while Hot Aussie isn't looking and hope that maybe the next day he'll get a reply, though Hot Aussie might not notice it and just throw the cup away.

In the end, Jack decides to just wing it.

“Why, hello there, stranger!” he says cheerfully. Hot Aussie gives him a glare, but Jack merely keeps his grin. “What can I do you for today?” He leans forward, bent at almost ninety degrees on the counter, so very not subtle.

If Hot Aussie notices, he hides it well, squinting at the board. “So bloody complicated,” he mutters. “Got anything that doesn't sound pretentiously and unnecessarily Italian?”

“Um... Americano?” Jack hazards. It _sounds_ Italian, but it _might_ pass as Spanish.

Hot Aussie doesn't buy it for an instant. “I'll take that as a no. Right then, something long and jet black and really sweet.”

“Coming right up!” Jack announces cheerfully. He makes the coffee with a spring in his step he lacks with other customers. It is then that he gets his Idea.

He offers the cup of coffee, but as Hot Aussie reaches out for it, he snatches it back. “Y'know,” he says, pouting slightly in faux-thought, “you've been coming here for ages, but I don't know your name.”

The Australian gives him a spectacular withering look. “None of your business, I think.”

“No name, no service,” Jack replies, his grin turning wicked. Hot Aussie rolls his eyes.

“There are other coffeeshops in this place,” he states. “I could get better service from them without even telling them who I bloody well am.”

Jack leans on the counter, half-on half-off, cup curled towards him. “Well, how about I give you my name first?”

“Do you think I'm bothered?” Hot Aussie asks, feigning disinterest, but if he truly didn't care, he wouldn't be sticking around, not even for his coffee.

“It's Jack,” Jack supplies.

“Right,” Hot Aussie mutters, managing to snatch his coffee. He turns, takes a swig, and just as he's opened the door he calls back, “it's Aster!”

Mission accomplished.

.

The next step is, of course, a date. A date would be totally awesome, but Jack has no idea how to go about these sort of things. He's still very much a kid in that sense (it was Elsa that did the asking, and look how well _that_ turned out). He scribbles Aster's name surrounded by hearts on the back of his notebook, for fuck's sake, he can't even begin to fathom how to ask someone out like an adult. Especially not someone as obviously older than him. Aster's probably dated a shit ton of guys, been there, done that, got the proverbial Nineties t-shirt. What can Jack bring to the table that a hundred twinks before him couldn't have brought?

That thought is a very depressing one. He wished he could tell his friends about it, but they simply wouldn't get it, would they? Merida wouldn't care less, too caught up in herself to give a fuck. Hiccup would think there were some bizarre mating rituals to be fulfilled, still caught up in the mindset that gay guys decorate interiors and wear pink. Rapunzel... Rapunzel is engaged to a guy she met the second she stepped out of the door of her house, what can she really help with. He'll probably just spend the rest of his university life pining over this one guy, and moaning about the one that got away when he's an old, bitter bachelor being taunted by his great-nieces and great-nephews.

But in the end, Rapunzel actually _does_ help, though it's only after a week and a half of mooning.

“Apparently,” she says over pizza, “my art professor is seeing someone.”

“Yeah?” Hiccup talks through a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. Rapunzel nods.

“Yeah. We asked him about it the other day and he just grinned and said he was seeing some, some guy from a coffeeshop.”

Jack's slice of pizza actually freezes halfway to his mouth. “Um... Punzie?”

She looks at him brightly.

“Does your art professor have a name?” he asks, hardly daring to hope.

“Of course, silly!” she replies, laughing. “It's Professor Bunnymund. He's head of the art department even though he's pretty young. I think he's thirty. He's Australian.”

Jack almost bursts out laughing. Right. That's it. He has to discover more about this 'Professor Bunnymund'.

He _could_ look it up on the website. First name will be there along with surname, it wouldn't be hard, but Jack doesn't like too easy. Instead he waltzes over to the art department when he knows most professors keep office hours. He slinks down the corridors, looking hipster-ish enough to blend in, and finds Professor Bunnymund's office quite easily. Then he laughs.

The sign on the door says 'E. Aster Bunnymund'.

He knocks once, hears a gunt which he supposes is an invitation to enter. He takes it gladly and saunters in. The office is mostly paintings and old canvases stacked in a corner, with a pine bookcase filled with art manuals and teaching guides. The other wall has a long sideboard filled with happy-looking potted plants of all different sizes and shapes, and Jack thinks, _Hi ho, Anthony Crowley_. “Afternoon, Professor,” he says, smirking.

Aster's head snaps up and suddenly, Jack sees a grin. The man leans back in his chair, steeples his fingers, and gives Jack a long look. “Was waiting for you to find me, actually.”

Jack thinks those green-rimmed glasses perched on the edge of Aster's nose are oddly hot. He's entirely oddly hot in that pale blue shirt, just the tip of a knee visible over the edge of the desk, one, paint-splattered knee. Jack stalks forward, perches on the edge of the desk, one leg up, one leg down, body at just the right tilt.

“So,” he muses, “'seeing some guy in a coffeeshop', huh?”

Aster shrugs. “Technically, I _am_ seeing you. I'm seeing you every day.”

It makes Jack chuckle. “That's very true. I just wish I'd been told about this.”

Aster cleared his throat and seemed suddenly nervous. “Well... I wasn't exactly sure you'd be fine with it,” he admits. Jack raises an eyebrow. “Bit older than you,” Aster adds. Jack bursts out laughing.

“Oh, come on! I was flirting as best I could! Admittedly, flirting isn't exactly one of my _fortes_ , but I think I did ok.”

It's Aster's turn to laugh. “I got it, don't worry. Well then, if you're not adverse to the idea, how about we make this thing official?”

Jack raises his eyebrows. “How so?” he asks, teasing. Aster gets to his feet and leans over the desk.

Jack thinks he might count _this_ as his first kiss, not the awkward fumblings in closets at parties, making up for lack of skill with too much tongue and other, much less savoury things. It's a really good kiss while still being completely chaste.

“Date, then?” Jack murmurs once Aster pulls away.

“'M free on Saturday,” Aster says with a twitch of his eyebrows. Jack grins back.

“Saturday at six then,” he replies.


	2. Idol/Fan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idol/Fan doesn't exactly work with Jack and Aster. If Jack sings, it makes Aster kind of look like a creeper, given the age difference I give them (not to mention my headcanon is that Jack is a terrible singer). I suppose Aster could be some sort of folk rock singer-songwriter with a guitar, or a Broadway actor (lol Hugh meta moment), but! I decided to go for webcomic artist/fanboy.

Jack was supposed to be feeling confident by now. He'd had all morning to gear himself up to this, he'd been recognised, people had taken photos of him, he hadn't had a single argument with a Homestuck cosplayer (which, given the sheer rivalry between the two fandoms, had surprised him) and, awesomest of awesome things, he'd even met and had his picture taken with a Toothiana cosplayer, who'd done a freaking _amazing_ job on her feathery leotard and harem pants.

Still, he couldn't quite believe he was about to meet the man that made all this possible.

 _The Guardians_ had slowly, steadily and inexorably eaten away at Jack's brain for the past year and a half. At first, he'd mocked it: the adventures of childhood folk mascots turned warriors? Really? But then Rapunzel had made him read it, and he'd been sucked into their world like it was a black hole and he was anything else in the vicinity. It was like the Avengers, but with Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman and – Jack's favourite – the Easter Bunny, fighting various bad guys and along the way learning more about who chose them and why. It was awesome. The Winter Prince had been introduced barely a chapter ago, and already he was the fandom's sweetheart, and Jack could relate to the character so badly it hurt. Outcast by his family for not being what they expected? Whoo boy. They even looked alike, down to the white hair and lanky frame, and this cosplay had been the most obvious choice (there was no way he'd be able to carry off Bunnymund's rarely seen human form, and a fursuit would have looked ridiculous). He'd even caught himself doing something he'd never understood before: shipping. Perhaps it was Jack's furry crush, or simply the sheer force of their on-page banter, but Jack found himself wishing and hoping Bunnymund and the Winter Prince would get together.

And the artist was here, at this convention, for signings and a quick chat, and Jack wasn't about to let this chance go to waste. With his precious copy of Book One of _The Guardians_ in one hand and his cosplay-vital staff in the other, he nervously wove his way through the crowd, and tried to feel positive. He was about to meet the guy everyone knew only as Aster, a guy whose creations had stolen away most of Jack's previous perceptions of life, dressed as one of the man's characters... no pressure.

Despite the overpowering wish to find the nearest bathroom and puke, he continued determinedly towards the small stand, more an Artist's Alley thing than an important framing device for an artist who'd turned Jack's life on its head. On the plyboard walls erected behind were an array of original artworks some of which Jack had never seen, watercolours of the Guardians themselves, the Winter Prince and Pitch Black, their worst enemy. Some of them made Jack's pulse quicken, they were so gorgeous, _especially_ the Bunnymund one.

Finally, he reached the table itself, and he lost the fight to keep the blood from flowing to his face.

Damn, the man was _hot_.

He was all broad shoulders, dark skin and muscle, with an easy, pleasant grin. The tattoos that wove up his arms were exactly like Bunnymund's vambraces, his sideburns made Jack's knees weak and... and a man like that _should not_ be wearing a t-shirt that tight. No, that had to be illegal. He had no right being an artist with a body like that. It didn't matter he looked about thirty, he hit all of Jack's buttons in all the right places.

_Down, boy._

He whistled when he caught sight of Jack, while Jack simply marvelled over the green green greenness of his eyes. They were so gorgeous, they brought words like 'verdant' to mind.

“How'd you get out of the comic?” he asked jokingly. Oh God, that _accent_.

Jack giggled like a schoolgirl, his cheeks burning. He tried to hide them with his comic, but he realised he'd have to lower it in order for it to be signed.

“H-hi,” he said breathlessly. “Would you mind signing this?”

“I certainly wouldn't, Your Highness,” Aster said, inclining his head politely with a grin. He scrawled a signature across the front of the cover. “Would you like a sketch?”

Jack could hardly believe his ears. He knew, of course, that artists would do sketches if people asked nicely enough, but to be offered one... wow, that made it special, didn't it? He nodded furiously.

“Who would you like?” Aster asked.

“Bunnymund, please,” Jack replied. Aster's eyebrows rose.

“Was expecting the Winter Prince, actually,” he said with a chuckle.

“I like the Prince, but Bunnymund's my favourite,” Jack admitted.

“Really?” Aster had taken a large piece of paper and was taking meticulous time sketching, first rough and faint, the outlines of the shapes that made Bunnymund Bunnymund.

“Yeah, Bunnymund's really handso- awesome. I mean awesome.” Jack's face burnt at the slip up. Great, now Aster would think he was the usual furry weirdo who was only in it for Bunnymund. Aster chuckled again.

“To be honest, he's my favourite too,” he admitted, winking. He finally grabbed an ink pen and went over the pencil lines, adding all the little details like the pauldrons, bandolier and vambraces as he went. Finally, after shading with a thinner pen, Bunnymund was spread on the white paper in all his glory.

“Who do I make it out to?” Aster asked.

“Jack Frost.”

Aster looked up, eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”

“Stupid parents,” Jack answered sheepishly. Aster's laugh was a glorious thing, he would have loved to hear it all the time.

“Ah, well, mine weren't much better. Named the whole lot of us after flowers, even the boys.” He wrote something along the bottom and signed it with the same flourish he'd used for the comic. “Now, I'd like something in return.”

“What?” Jack asked curiously. He found himself shamefully wishing some yaoi cliché would happen and Aster would ask for a kiss.

“A photo!” Aster announced, getting to his feet and scooting around the table. From seemingly nowhere a woman with brilliantly coloured hair, clothes like a Holi festival aftermath and dusky skin appeared, holding a very professional-looking camera. She gave Jack the brightest, whitest grin he'd ever seen, and he was forcibly reminded of Toothiana the Tooth Fairy.

“Say 'Minty Freshness'!” she chirped, holding up her camera.

Jack stiffened as Aster's arm went around his waist. He was just posing, but whoa, whoa, _whoa_ , Jack was _not_ prepared for hot guys touching him, even like that. He reciprocated, holding his staff in front of them so it was visible, and the woman's camera clicked.

“Perfect!” she trilled, hopping from one foot to the other. “You look amazing,” she said to Jack, giving him a thumbs up.

Jack grinned at her in reply. “Thanks!”

“No, thank _you_ ,” Aster said, handing Jack his artwork as he sat back down. Jack blushed again, lowering his gaze.

“Um, thanks. I mean, you're welcome. Uh, bye.” He backed away, waving at them – they both waved back – and turned away, finally. Once he'd been swallowed by the crowd, he finally studied his artwork.

Bunnymund's pose was proud and battle-ready, every inch the Pooka warrior his backstory had shown him to be. He was wielding a pointed staff instead of his usual boomerangs, feet apart, ears perked up, face serious. In all honesty, an anthropomorphic rabbit shouldn't have looked that hot. Then he read the dedication.

_To Jack Frost,_  
 _I wrap up at 5. I know a great coffeeshop not far from here.  
E. Aster Bunnymund._

.

“I can't believe you _did_ that!”

Jack was half-hidden by his pillow, eyeing the screen with something caught between embarrassment and affection. Aster laughed, tinny through the speakers, and shrugged.

 _“I wanted to,”_ he said. Jack buried his face in his pillow and groaned.

He was sitting where he always sat when they Skyped, which was cross-legged on the bed, his laptop in front of him. It was the place he'd sat when their relationship had gone from one date and friendship to a long-distance _something more_ , where he'd sat when Aster had first said he would head out to Burgess so they could spend some time together. It was where he'd sat when he'd told Aster he could make it to the New York ComiCon.

Hell, they'd jacked off to each other in this place. Others might have called it creepy, but the memories simply made Jack bite his lip and close his eyes.

Right now, however, the reason they were Skyping was very different to the usual one.

It happened gradually. First off, the Winter Prince took a new name, shedding his previous identity entirely, and became Jack Frost, the Herald of Winter by Mother Nature's decree, and a Guardian by will of the Chooser. When Jack called Aster out on it, he confessed he'd always had that in mind. “It's a sheer coincidence, I swear,” he said.

The next plot twist Jack was certain was _not_ a coincidence.

It had been a suspenseful chapter, so far. Pitch's very own Nightmares and a huge battle, and Bunnymund had been injured. Then came the final few pages – there were always thirty, and they were on twenty-eight already. Jack Frost had unleashed an incredible power, destroying the Nightmares almost single-handedly, and then, on page thirty... the biggest plot twist of them all.

Jack Frost and Bunnymund. Kissing. On panel.

“You're _such_ a jerk!” Jack groaned. Aster laughed again.

 _“What, you're not happy about it?”_ he enquired lightly. Jack rolled his eyes.

“You can't just make ships canon to make me happy,” he muttered. Aster scratched his chin.

 _“To be honest,”_ he said, _“once you started talking about them, telling me why you put 'em together, it made sense. Besides, I like it. Might shut up the Elsa and Jack weirdos.”_

Jack scoffed. “Nothing will shut up the shippers, believe me. But thank you.” He smiled. “Does this make it official?”

 _“It makes it_ very _official,”_ Aster said, and he sounded so sincere Jack blushed to the roots of his hair.

If you'd told him a year and a half ago that he'd be dating his favourite webcomic artist, he would have called you mad. As it was, that was precisely what he was doing, and it was ridiculous and amazing and everything he could ever have wanted.

And now his ship was canon. He could sing.

“And moving to New York doesn't?” he half-joked. Aster chuckled.

_“That makes it official as well. Double official.”_

“So intense,” Jack replied. He lowered his pillow. “I love you,” he said. Aster smiled back, something warm and beautiful that lit up his face.

 _“Love you too,”_ he replied.

Jack wished there was a way to kiss him through the screen. Jack wished he could reach through the maze of waves and fibre optics and drag himself through to the other side, to cling to Aster and never let go.

“See you Friday,” he murmured. Friday was the big day. Friday was the day his packed bags would leave through the door with him, the boxes following at a slower pace, and Hiccup would have to find a new roommate. Friday was goodbye, Burgess, hello, New York, and hello, life with Aster.

 _“See you,”_ Aster said.

Reluctant as he was to sever the connection, Jack had to. He closed the laptop and flopped back onto the bed, grinning up at the ceiling.


	3. Angel/Demon AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right. I've decided that since the original third prompt (Anonymous Love Letters) simply wasn't working despite all the help I was getting with it, it gets shimmied down the list penultimate place for a better day. Instead you get monstrously long angel/demon AU which grew a plot half-way through. At first I had no idea how the hell I would do this. Then this happened.
> 
> Ah, some names have been changed for reasons (though I'm not sure what they are), so Sandy is called Duma and Toothiana is called Zachriel.

He wasn't one of the old guard, the gang of likely lads that had fallen from Heaven with the mulish arrogance one could rightly expect from those who were to become demons. No, here was a demon, born and bred in Hell, who'd never been within coo-ee of God's Kingdom. Why they'd sent an amateur to cover for Kozmotis, a Duke of Hell, Aster would never know, but he bore the change with all the good grace associated with him.

Which is to say, none at all.

He despised the new arrival. Over the years, he and Kozmotis had come to a certain arrangement, something that had become almost amicable, agreeing on set dates for temptations and thwartings and sticking to them, and even going for a pint now and again. But this upstart had no idea the arrangement even existed, and therefore gleefully darted around town, tempting hither and thither, and actually making Aster do his job (there had been a time, many centuries ago, when Aster had taken pride in doing his job. That, of course, had been a time when people had given a fuck. Now he regarded it with the same sort of apathy an office worker regards their cubicle). Even worse, the larrikin insisted on trying to tempt _him_.

If that didn't make him an arrogant little figjam, Aster didn't know what did, but that wasn't even the worst part of it. What could be worse than that, any right-minded person would ask.

Well, the absolute worst part was that Aster was so _very_ sorely tempted.

.

“Good morning, chuckles!”

Aster daydreamed about throwing something at that pointed, boyish face with the annoyingly perfect grin, but violence never sat well with Upstairs unless you were as trigger-happy as Michael. Then he contemplated making the potplants dotted around the shop come to life and chase the kid out, but he didn't think the weirdness censor of the few present customers was that good. Aster always seemed to attract the loonies.

“The bloody hell do you want?” Aster snapped, always content to swear and blaspheme. If he were to pose as an Australian, he'd argued once, then he might as well do it properly. It also gave him a sense of freedom he supposed most angels never got to experience.

The larrikin merely leaned on the counter with a grin halfway between sunshine and shark.

To any onlooker who still gave thought to spiritual matters, _he_ would have seemed the angel. Perhaps it was the toffee-coloured eyes, or the hair precisely the same colour of warm hot chocolate (stupid boy looking like the wares of a sweetshop), not to mention his innate charisma. Aster himself had always favoured a darker form, with black hair (going grey at the temples, though) and skin the colour of burnt earth. He was also a grumpy bastard, and seemed to revel in it. They couldn't have been more different.

“Can't I come visit a colleague, once in a while?” the kid asked innocently.

The kid did have a name. That name was Jack, Aster knew it perfectly well, but he refused to use it.

“You're not a _colleague_. If you had Grace and wings and a disposition to decency, then you would be, but you haven't, so rack off.”

The kid was almost as good at feigning hurt feelings as Kozmotis. He pressed his hand to his heart and sighed.

“You wound me, Aster,” he said, pouting. Aster had to look away. You couldn't look at a pout like that for very long without wanting to kiss it, and he had a sneaky suspicion Jack knew perfectly well what was going on in Aster's head when he saw that pout.

He'd been on this Earth roughly five thousand years. He'd deflected everything Kozmotis could throw at him and then some, without breaking a sweat or batting an eyelid. But, Lord above, this junior demon was getting under his skin like some exquisite splinter.

“It's boring out there,” Jack went on, waving a hand to encompass the late afternoon world beyond the front window filled with canvasses and paint tins and easels and a few colourful mask-making kits to attract the kiddies. “I like being in here. It's _fun_.”

“And I suppose you're all about _fun_ ,” Aster snorted. He picked absently at his keyboard, trying valiantly to ignore the way the kid sprawled enticingly across the counter, almost on display.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” Jack replied easily. “I went partying last night. So many girls and boys, so easily mislead...”

“Well, that would explain why you're never up at a decent hour,” Aster said, deadpan.

Jack sidled slightly to the left to allow a woman to pay for a handful of pencils, and began fiddling with the small basket of novelty erasers by his elbow, picking them up and letting them fall again.

“Well, if you'd come out with me some time, maybe you could also enjoy something of a lie-in.”

“Early to rise, early to bed,” Aster recited tonelessly, handing the woman her change.

“I could make so many _lovely_ jokes right there,” Jack sighed wistfully, “but I'm not going to. I'll let your mind supply them, so you can offend your delicate, heavenly morals on your own.”

The trouble was, Aster mused, that the ideas Jack's words brought to mind weren't at all unpleasant. It had been brewing for a while, this hot hunger of the kind Aster had never felt before, and Jack's presence did absolutely nothing to assuage it. When he wasn't there, Aster burnt wanting him there. When he was there, Aster burnt wanting him in his arms. He couldn't win, and he expected that there could be no victory in this.

“Rack off, I need to close the shop,” he said sharply. The last customer had gone, everything was put in order with a wave of Aster's hand, and he held the door open. He also cleared his throat pointedly.

Jack laughed, something low and dark which Aster was sure was a sin in and of itself, and sauntered over, part colt, part panther. “How about,” he said, getting deep into Aster's personal space, close enough that Aster could smell him, clean pine with a pinch of heat, something altogether demonic and wholly intoxicating, “we go out, just for a drink?”

Aster swallowed. This was his downfall, right here, the moment the rest of his existence hinged on. This was his Temptation in the Desert.

He fell willingly.

.

He could have miracled the hangover away. It would have been easy enough, a snap of the fingers and all gone – after all, his pain receptacles were much like the rest of him, a rather loose concept – but Aster felt he deserved the pain. It felt like a fitting penance for being so utterly _stupid_ the night before.

It felt good, though, to be stupid. It felt good to have a lithe, pale armful of demon pressed against his side, snuffling gently into his armpit. It felt good to have the place smell of sex, burning and the tangy, sweet hint of Grace that prickled on the tip of the tongue. It had felt so good to have allowed the kid to press him down to the bed and impale himself upon him, watch him arch and hear him moan out Aster's name. They'd merged so perfectly, learning each other's taste and touch and moving together in a sinuous dance that had made them both sing praises.

“Close your eyes,” Aster had murmured, and Jack, to his surprise, had done so obediently. Aster's wings had spread, the room had filled with holy light, and if anyone had been looking at the window of the flat above the art shop that night, they would have been struck with a sudden religious awakening.

Aster could now understand why humans gave in to the pleasures of the flesh. He could understand why their every waking moment seemed fixed on getting laid, because damn, it was _glorious_.

Thinking hurt, though, so he tried not to remember much.

Jack murmured something, rolling closer to Aster and hooking a thin leg over Aster's darker, more muscular one. _He_ didn't seem inclined to wake up, nor did he seem particularly worse for wear in the head department, the lucky little bastard. Aster squinted at the ceiling, the light from the half-open curtains driving nails into his head.

Ah, fuck this.

He snapped his fingers and the agony was blessedly gone. His stomach no longer felt as if it was doing homework for acrobatics class, and he could fully enjoy the smooth skin and warm flesh pressed against his side.

And all that entailed, he supposed.

He rolled them both over until Jack was spread beneath him, blinking dazedly, and Aster kissed him, long and languid until Jack hummed into it and wound his arms around Aster's shoulders and dragged him closer, down into it.

When Aster pulled away, Jack licked his lips, eyes half-lidded. “You're really good at this, for an angel,” he said.

“Fast learner,” Aster said. “Besides, how many angels have you ever gone to bed with?”

“Only one,” Jack replied, letting a hand spread across Aster's chest, down over washboard abs. He drew a finger down the fine line of black hair that led from Aster's unnecessary navel to his groin, looking down between them as if enjoying the view. “But I don't want there to be any more.”

Aster looked up, startled. Jack, to his utter shock, blushed, licking his lips again.

“Perhaps I've been converted,” he murmured.

Aster kissed him.

.

“Listen, I really need to open the shop,” Aster grumbled, as Jack tried to pull him back to the bed. This was the farthest he'd gotten so far, all the way to the bedroom door, and he was only bare-chested this time, which was a miracle in and of itself. Jack whined, something plaintive and pouty that shot right to Aster's cock and reminded him that refractory periods in metaphysical beings who could will their genitalia into existence did not exist.

“Can't you leave it closed today?” he asked, running a finger along Aster's collarbone, down across his chest, circling a nipple. Aster bit his lip.

He wasn't sure how many points he'd rung up on his previously immaculate sin card, but he didn't exactly _care_ , either.

“Come on, that's enough,” he said, and he meant it, too. “You'll have something to look forward to later.”

Jack snorted derisively. “Hello, _demon_?” He pointed to himself. “I don't _do_ 'patient'. I do 'let's sin now, while we're still young'.”

“Considering you're never _not_ going to be young,” Aster mused with a raised eyebrow. Jack waved away his argument as if it were smoke.

“That's neither here nor there. What's important is that you throw me back down on that bed and take me _hard_. _Now_.”

Aster had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from groaning. He licked away the blood. “I can do that just as easily later. Now, be a good boy and let daddy get to work.” He punctuated the sentence with a quick smack to the kid's arse.

Jack's groan, a mix of frustrated and aroused, was priceless. “For an angel,” he muttered, “you're pretty kinky.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Aster mumbled, rolling his eyes as he pulled his t-shirt on.

He'd always been a good angel. He'd liked what he'd liked – which explained the Acca Dacca t-shirt and the frayed jeans. He wasn't a stuffy old frump like that bookseller that haunted London, which made his methods considerably more efficient than most other angels stationed on the blue planet, who still seemed to operate with a mindset that would have done the Victorians proud. He was convincing, he was sincere, and he knew the best way to do good was to actually _go out_ and _do_ good.

He'd almost forgotten he was due at the soupie that evening.

He'd also failed to inform Jack about it, which meant that when the kid sauntered downstairs wearing Aster's rugger shirt, he'd had to deliver some disappointing news.

“Got to go to the soupie,” he said, and although the temptation to stay here and lounge about in bed with a horny demon was extremely strong, the impetus to bring a little bit of ease to the lives of others was stronger. It was part of him, part of the foundations of his spiritual self, and he couldn't fight that as easily as, it seemed, Temptation, even when Temptation pranced about with a pert little arse and grinned like a cat.

“The soupie?” Jack echoed in confusion.

“Wanna come?” Aster asked. “Along with me,” he added, before Jack could make the obvious, tasteless joke.

It was obvious that Jack's brief sojourn on the surface had no prepared him for the base existence of humanity. As soon as they set foot through the door, Jack's eyes widened in comical horror.

The soupie was actually half of the basement of a community centre, where a previous, people-minded priest had had an industrial kitchen installed. The rest, and most, of the floor was occupied by tables that spanned every possible option of tableness, from glass-topped to picnic to plain old pine and Formica. The chairs, too, were an interior designer's patchwork nightmare. The walls were covered with irritating motivational posters and one old Star Wars one which Aster fondly remembered adding to the wall in 1980... something.

Regulars knew him. The ladies that ran the place knew him. The priest and the imam whose communities helped fund the place knew him. That he hadn't aged since the Great Depression, when the place was opened, was knowledge no one bothered acknowledging. Privately, Aster suspected that a few of the ladies knew perfectly well what he was. It didn't really matter.

The tables were currently occupied with some of the city's less fortunate. All human life was there, from drug addicts and alcoholics that spent their lives sofa-surfing, to homeless crazies Aster had known for over ten years. There were teenagers of every backstory stuck in the limbo between minor and adult, the kind too young to be here and too old to be cared about anymore. There were the illegal immigrants, sad-eyed men who couldn't go home and weren't allowed to stay. There were those who'd lost their homes, those that had never had one, and those that simply didn't have the money for food.

“This is the soupie?” Jack murmured, looking around.

“Yeah,” Aster said. Mrs Higgs handed him an apron, and then eyed Jack suspiciously.

“Who that?” she asked.

“Jack,” Aster replied simply. “He's helping out tonight.”

The silent, unwritten rules of the soupie were simple: no fighting, no drug-dealing, no alcohol. Arguments had to stay outside, as did any unsavoury opinions. Food was dished out in an orderly manner, people talked – some a little louder than necessary, as if to push the words through the fog of alcohol – and people ate.

“I didn't even know this place existed,” Jack muttered. He was leaning against the counter next to Aster, watching mortals sustain their existence.

“I can imagine,” Aster said, not an accusation, just a statement. Demons liked the finer things in life, and remained at the farthest end of the spectrum from humanity at large – rich people were so much easier to tempt. Aster, on the other hand, preferred it at this end. He remembered handing out bread, helping in tents where the stench of decay and death stood like a living thing, sitting down children displaced by fools and their conflicts and teaching them what he could, centuries and centuries of this, as the rest of the world forgot what charity was.

“So... does the guy I'm covering for have anything to do with... You know...?” Jack surreptitiously indicated the addicts. Aster made a face.

“Nah, Kozmotis finds addiction to be tasteless. No demon did this.” Aster sighed. “Sometimes humans do everything on their own. You have to be there to pick up the pieces. That's what we're here for.”

He ducked his head, trying not to feel too bitter. Sometimes it wasn't only humans that forgot other humans needed help.

He and Jack helped clean up, bid a quick farewell to the matronly ladies that ran the place, and headed out into the night. No one bothered with them, though many skulked in alleyways like rats, watching them pass. There was something primordial, deep in the human consciousness, that not even alcohol or drugs could dim, and that was the knowledge of the supernatural, and how it was not to be messed with.

To Aster's surprise, Jack halted on the doorstep.

“Listen, I... I think I'll spend the night at home.”

Aster chuckled. “Dumping me so soon?”

Jack scowled, then surged up like a tidal wave and kissed him, hard and passionately. “No,” he said, his voice taking a hint of the legion for a fierce moment. “Never. But...”

Aster nodded. He didn't need Jack to tell him the soupie had been a sobering thing. If Jack was to return to his life, dragging the city's youth deeper into the pit, then he would see it with very different eyes. He kissed Jack on the forehead and watched the kid go, his pallor sucking up the streetlight as he went.

.

Aster was jerked awake at two in the morning by a pounding at the door. The upstairs one.

Strictly speaking, angels don't need to sleep, but it was an indulgence Upstairs didn't mind, provided it didn't turn to Sloth. Aster like to indulge in that, especially on sunny Sunday afternoons when the shop was closed and the tiny square of yellowed grass and his pitiful deckchair seemed very inviting things.

Aster scrambled from the bed, disentangling himself from the sheets, and threw himself up the stairs to the roof. Something was wrong, he could taste it on the air.

He wrenched the door open and there was Jack, spread over the concrete, a leathery wing twisted into a shape so utterly and terribly wrong that it almost made Aster sick.

“I got ya, mate,” he murmured. Jack cried as Aster lifted him up, clothes torn, wounds seeping that unique blend of blood and dark ichor demons required to take earthly form. Aster went slowly, ignoring how his bare chest ended up smeared with black, trying to stop the wing from taking any more hurt. It dragged, though, and although Jack tried to grit his teeth and bear it, he still let out a cry of agony.

Physical wings. What was Lucifer _thinking_?

Aster lay Jack carefully across his bed, on his stomach, and allowed a moment for the boy to settle. Jack's breath was shallow and fast, his body stiffening jerkily as a fresh wave of pain shot along his nerves.

“What happened?” Aster asked, sliding onto the edge of the bed. Jack whimpered.

“They... they were l-like me, but h-higher up...” It took Aster a moment to remember Hell measured hierarchy in reverse. “They... they s-said I stank of angel... I tried to f-fly away, b-b-but they grabbed my wing and... and...”

Aster could imagine what had happened next. He fought down the fury, beat it into submission, and ran a comforting hand down Jack's back.

“Don't worry, we'll get you sorted.” Aster ran a hand through his hair and huffed. “This is going to hurt.” And it would. It would be agony. Jack was already trembling from the pain and the shock, and he merely nodded and gripped the pillow.

Aster placed his hands on Jack's broken wing, and let his Grace flow forth.

Though Jack managed to muffle his ungodly scream by biting the pillow, it was still painfully loud. It didn't come from his throat or his lungs, it came from the very core of his being, shot through with the voice of legion and echoing off the walls. He arched, writhing, his other wing flailing in sympathy, but Aster kept his hands where they were, feeling the bones knotting together underneath his touch. The smell of burning skin was almost unbearable, thick, visible black smoke surging up from Jack's wing, and as soon as Aster felt the breakages unite again, he tore his hands away. They felt scalded, and he rubbed them gingerly.

Jack flopped back to the bed, tears streaming down his face, beads of sweat across his brow. His wings twitched, jumpily and unnaturally, as he whimpered softly. The mended wing sported two great burn marks in the shape of Aster's hands.

“She'll be apples, don't worry...” Aster murmured, running his fingers through Jack's hair. Jack burrowed into him, clutching at his thigh, his breathing rough.

Aster had been a follower of Raphael, once, and everyone knew Raphael was the Healer. He'd had to do this for Kozmotis, back in the day, after some ridiculous human battle where Koz, prancing around as an arrogant Crusader knight, had been seen for what he was by the inhabitants. He had run to Aster on the other side of the conflict, trembling and terrified. It had never hurt Koz so badly, though.

Having never been an angel, Jack had no idea what it was like to have the Grace of God inside him. He was something purely demonic, and Aster supposed it was only due to his superior healing skills that the boy hadn't encountered a messy decorporealisation and a one-way ticket back to Hell.

“That hurt so badly,” Jack rasped, his forehead pressed to the side of Aster's thigh.

“I know,” Aster murmured. “Should fix on its own, now.”

He hoped it would. It wouldn't do for Jack to flit around town with two bloody great Grace brands all over his wing.

If Aster reached out, he could feel a tiny part of him flowing through the youth, a speck of brilliance in amongst the black, and Aster knew it would never go away. It had taken the Abyss and several thousands of years of sin to rid Lucifer and his cohorts of their Grace, and even now they still felt its influence. Jack was marked as his, now, his own Grace pulsing in the veins of a junior demon. It was hard not to feel a surge of protectiveness.

“Aster, they... I don't know what they're going to do,” Jack whimpered, his voice trembling. Aster hushed him.

“Don't worry, you can stay here,” he said. “Sleep, now. Sleep heals.”

Jack seemed to do what he was told, his breathing evening out as he drifted off, though he remained stuck to Aster's side. He seemed so young, then. There was no way he was older than a few hundred years, and to Aster that now seemed painfully young. He'd seen nothing of the world, really. He hadn't been there to see Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed, or Jericho, or any other instances when the Man Upstairs revealed He was not as reasonable as He would like people to believe.

If Aster were more self-righteous, he would have blamed these thoughts on Jack's presence. It was, of course, ridiculous. Aster couldn't remember the last time he'd thought them – maybe he always had. It was a miracle he'd remained an angel of the Lord and not fallen.

He fell asleep himself, with Jack's head in his lap and a hand on his shoulders.

.

Jack still couldn't put his wings away the next morning. It was simply too painful, and after the third anguished whimper Aster had ordered him to stop, otherwise he'd make him sorry. It was hard to be authoritative when you were brandishing an electric whisk and a bowl of pancake batter and wearing an apron, but Aster had had plenty of practice.

Unfortunately, the fact his wings were out meant Jack had become doubly clumsy. It was ridiculous, really, how he kept knocking things over and apologising sheepishly. They were just the right height to brush everything off the coffee table, and Aster was reminded of that stage in a dog's life when they were adult-sized, but puppy-brained, and the tail made an excellent cricket bat.

Aster didn't care, as long as Jack apologised, because then he usually also got kisses, and he couldn't rightly complain about those. Also, the wings being out meant he couldn't wear a shirt, and Aster certainly wasn't going to complain about that.

The arrangement lasted for about two days, until finally Jack had the strength to folded his wings up and make them disappear into his back, leaving two great black tattoos in the shape of bat wings in their place. Aster clucked his tongue in disapproval.

“Physical wings,” he muttered. “Bloody stupid idea.”

Jack, instead of scowling, looked down meekly. “'Snot my fault,” he mumbled. He'd been very subdued since his injuries, it was painful to see. This wasn't Jack, not at all.

“I know,” Aster murmured, pulling the boy against him. Jack melted into the embrace, clinging, it seemed, for dear life. Aster truly didn't know what to do. “Hey, you've shown me yours, how about I show you mine?”

Jack looked up. “They won't melt my eyes out, will they?” he asked. Aster snorted.

“No,” he said. “Not if I turn the Grace off.”

He led Jack up to the roof again. It was early evening, the sounds of the rest of the neighbourhood going home drifted over, and Aster shrugged off his shirt. It was nice to get that appreciative look.

It was nice to stretch his wings again, to flex them experimentally and let the breeze ruffle his feathers. He hadn't flown for what seemed like a lifetime, but he contented himself with showing them off. He let Jack run his hands over them, and he shivered. Yeah, it was to be expected that they'd be sensitive.

Jack's grin was, as was its wont, diabolical. “That feel good?” he asked innocently, sauntering around to stand behind Aster and press against him from behind. His wicked hands went to where wing met shoulder blade, rubbing gently with just the tips of his fingers. Aster choked back a groan, which pushed Jack to knead harder and sift his fingers through the feathers.

“Right, that's it.” Aster turned, picked Jack up and threw him over his shoulder. Jack laughed, laughed like he hadn't for three whole days, and Aster carried him downstairs like some conquering soldier with his reward, something warm and bright blossoming in his chest that had nothing to do with arousal and everything, he assumed, with Jack's recovery, with his smile and his impish nature returned.

It didn't really matter. Not when Jack's back was pressed against his chest, when he arched with every thrust, one arm reaching up to dig into Aster's hair, the other on his own cock. It didn't matter when every other moan was a half-choked attempt at Aster's name, it didn't matter when Aster's hand met Jack's and he brought the kid to completion, tasting the salt on his neck as he did.

It mattered though, when Jack curled up against him afterwards and muttered something. Something that sounded so much like, “I love you.”. It mattered because it gave Aster the strength he needed to answer.

“So do I.”

.

Idylls never last long, it is a rule of Creation, and Jack and Aster's began to end the very next day.

Angels are, as a rule, disgustingly morning people. Aster was no exception, and therefore the smells of breakfast could easily waft through the apartment about the art shop at anywhere from seven to eight o'clock, which was perfect because the shop opened at nine, anyway.

That was when the bell rang downstairs.

Frowning, Aster descended the stairs, then froze. He could easily see who it was, even through the blind he pulled down every evening. He could taste it on the air, feel it in his very being, like electricity in the atmosphere.

There was an archangel hanging on his doorbell.

Licking his lips and taking a deep breath, he opened the door. He recognised Gabriel immediately: dark skin, darker hair, eyes like the water that lapped at tropical beaches, and the bearing of someone so _very_ self-important. Aster remembered what had happened, once, to a young angel who'd dared to call him a glorified postman, even only in jest. That angel was still wingless and broken down in the slums with the other grigori. This was the angel of the Annunciation and the Revelation of the Qu'ran, and he did not take kindly to mockery. The Herald of Heaven was not to be trifled with.

Aster swallowed as Gabriel sauntered in, giving the place a disgusted once-over. Behind him, to Aster's shock, shuffled a guilty-looking young angel who'd decided to take a female form. Aster remembered her. They'd been friends before he'd left for Earth. They talked whenever he returned Upstairs, which was hardly ever.

He didn't know what she called herself down here, but Upstairs her name was Zachriel. She gave Aster an apologetic look and sidled over to Gabriel's side meekly. Why was she here?

“Israfel,” Gabriel said coldly, but, then again, he said everything coldly. Aster hadn't heard that name in ages.

“Archangel Gabriel,” Aster replied, inclining his head respectfully. “To what do I owe this visit.”

“We have had word,” Gabriel said, making the moment last longer by strolling over to a shelf and perusing the wares, “that you are harbouring a demon.”

Aster's insides turned to ice. He frowned. “Who told you that?”

Gabriel waved the question away as if it didn't matter, which to him, it probably didn't. “It doesn't matter. What does matter that you been recalled. For a minor disciplinary matter.”

“And that required the likes of yourself to come and get me?” Aster asked, injecting just the tiniest hint of venom into his tone. Gabriel didn't scare him. Aster was still a seraph, after all.

Gabriel shot him a look that would have made a minor angel quail. When he spoke, though, his voice was nothing but silky. “I am the Herald, in case you'd forgotten, and you are high enough the hierarchy to warrant a proper declaration. You're lucky they didn't send Uriel to arrest you. That was what the Metatron wanted.”

Aster paled, Zachriel made a sound much like a chirp of horror and even Gabriel looked distinctly uncomfortable. Fear of the Heavenly Judge was something any angel learnt immediately, be they lowly grigor or Michael himself.

“Luckily, Raphael stepped in to stop it all before it got out of hand. Michael also vouched for you.”

Aster vaguely remembered battles fought at Michael's side, a compliment from the General of Heaven himself, once. That was the extent of his memories, though.

“I've also been sent to collect evidence, which is also why our dear Zachriel is here.” He pulled something that looked like spun crystal from thin air, and Aster stared at it. A catalyst of memory? Gabriel gestured at him. “If you would.”

Zachriel stepped forward, wringing her hands, and it was only then that Aster realised she was actually hovering. “I'm so sorry,” she murmured, and placed her hands on either side of Aster's head.

The memories burst forth in a fountain of agony, making Aster scream, though he didn't hear it. All he could hear was the cacophony inside his own head, the blaze of voices and the noise that was like pain made into sound. Recollections stabbed through his mind like star-hot blades, sorting themselves out like shuffled playing cards with razor edges.

Aster fought it, struggled, growing weaker and weaker, until the memories became vivid and his mind slumped into submission. There they were, clear as day, and his downfall: the Arrangement with Kozmotis, his treasonous thoughts, and Jack... Jack burnt like a fire brand, like the belly of a star, a scalding white light in his mind. The way they touched, the way they kissed, words spoken and feelings felt... It was something they had no right to see, and it gave Aster the surge of strength to fight again.

Zachriel's touch was torn from his mind, tossing her across the room and into a shelf, covering her in pencils and sketchbooks. The rest of the shop upheaved itself in the shockwave, leaving Gabriel the only thing standing in the midst of the destruction. Aster slumped against the counter, knees shaking like a newborn fawn's, breathing heavily, though he didn't need to.

“To be honest, Israfel, I have collected enough.”

Aster raised his head. The catalyst was pulsating gently with thoughts that seemed to have a spring green tinge. Zachriel picked herself up out of the mess, tottering over to lean against the newly cleared wall. She was trembling, and there were tears streaming down her face.

“I'm sorry,” Gabriel said, and for once, he sounded sincere.

“Are you all right?” Zachriel asked, stumbling over to place a worried hand on his shoulder.

“Apart from the mind rape? Ripper.”

Zachriel chanced the tiniest of giggles. Gabriel cleared his throat.

“This is all very thrilling, but we do need to move on,” he said. You'll forgive me if I seem abrupt, I trust?”

Aster waved a hand. “Go on then.”

Gabriel placed a hand on Aster's shoulder, to steady him, and then they were gone.

.

Heaven, by nature, doesn't change. It remains a fixed thing in the minds of people and in its celestial spheres, and so the glorious gardens and white palaces still look as they have ever done. Modernity had no place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Aster wasn't sure if that was a comfort to him or not. He decided it wasn't, because a lack of change brought complacency and self-importance.

He wondered how he found the strength to be philosophical in this cell.

Cell... cell was a bad word for it. It was Spartan, true, but it was still luxurious by the standards of a human cell – which Aster had seen the inside of, once or twice. He was hovering in a state between corporeal and spiritual, which was sort of an itchy sensation. He couldn't have a body in Heaven, but nor could he be a pure spirit so soon after leaving Earth. In the absence of a solution, he brooded.

Waiting for his hearing was tiresome, and he feared the worst. Sometimes things were hopeless even for the Angel of Hope. If Uriel had seen the evidence his memories presented, the best he could hope for would be the grigori slums. Uriel would see fraternisation and fornication with demons as high treason, and that might mean non-existence. Aster shuddered in horror.

His thoughts, however, preferred to stray to Jack, more often than not. What was he doing now? Where was he? How was he? Could Heaven do anything to him? These thoughts chased themselves around in Aster's head senselessly, like a dog after its own tail, and never brought him any solutions. He had no far sight, and no contact with the outside world. He couldn't phase through the walls of his cell, and he couldn't rightly ask a guard for news.

He was dwelling on this when the door to his cell opened.

“Israfel, you are summoned,” said the guard.

Aster was flanked by three guards either side as he was led to the Hall of Justice. He didn't know why, he couldn't escape anyway, the seal on his powers covering the entirety of his body, from head to toe, like some tattoo artist had gone mad. The pearlescent doors of the Hall opened, and Aster raised an eyebrow.

Ah, Uriel himself. To be expected.

Uriel did not often take form. He preferred to exist in a spiritual state, to be closer to God, but now he was sitting in the high seat of the Heavenly Judge, all dark curls and ebony skin, his eyes made of Grace itself, and he looked every part the Judge. To his left and right sat the other Archangels. Raphael was biting his lip, looking worried, and Michael, to the right, was clenching his fists. Above them all sat, wreathed in holy light, the Metatron himself.

Aster gulped, like someone from a cartoon.

“Israfel,” Uriel's voice rang with might, it seemed to echo inside Aster's own body, “you are hereby summoned to hear the punishment for your crimes!”

Raphael made a choked noise and buried his face in his hands, and Aster suddenly felt guilty. Raphael was a healer, he couldn't stand things like this, and he imagined the disappointment he was giving his old master.

“Your crimes are: High Treason, Fornication and Fraternisation with Those Who Fell, and Sin. Do you deny them?”

What was the point of denying them? The evidence was Aster's memories. Memories couldn't be faked, at least, not metaphysical ones. He shrugged dispassionately.

“Not really,” he said.

He felt the blast of Grace as it hit him like a gust of hot wind. Uriel's fury was always a tangible thing.

“You show utter contempt for this court and no repentance!” he hollered, his voice like trumpets and thunder. “I hereby sentence you to be taken from existence.”

Aster grimaced. It would probably be painful, but at least the pain would end. Though... so would everything else. He looked at his hands. They'd never sinned before a week ago, they'd never touched another the way they'd touched Jack, and he couldn't rightly believe he was being punished for loving someone else, demon or no demon. He clenched his fists, and grit his teeth.

“I shall give you one last chance to repent,” Uriel announced. “And you may be spared. Forgiveness is Our Lord's greatest virtue.”

Aster raised his head. “I'm not repenting anything,” he said, surprised at how steady his voice was. “Should I repent for making a friend? Should I repent for loving someone, regardless of what they are? I don't think so. I'm not going to. I don't fear Nothing.”

Raphael actually burst into tears, burying his face in his hands.

“Would you consider, then,” Uriel said, and to Aster's surprise, he sounded reasonable, “to Fall, and be of the ilk you have chosen to associate with?”

Aster stared. His instinct for self-preservation begged him to take the chance, to save himself, to be with Jack, but the angel in him fought it. He was no demon. He couldn't tempt, he couldn't bring misfortune to others and enjoy it. He was an angel, and he always would be, whatever he did. He shook his head.

“The offer is generous,” he replied, and the thought of Jack alone was agony, “but I'm no demon.”

Uriel sighed. “We gave you a chance. Take him away.”

.

They led him back to his cell and left him. He wasn't there for long, though. They took him to a great plaza Aster didn't recognised, round and open to the perennially blue sky. At the centre of it was what looked like a marble bed, and around it stood everyone who was needed. Raphael was still weeping, being comforted by Michael. Gabriel didn't look at him. Uriel stood, impassive, like a statue, and Samael stood there also, cloaked, the night sky in the folds of his hood. The Metatron watched from afar. To Aster's surprise, though, Duma stood there as well.

Duma was an old friend as well, sometimes a star, sometimes a spirit. He gave Aster a pitying look as he approached.

“So,” Aster said, clapping his hands, “we gonna get this over and done with?”

YOU SHOULD NOT JEST, Samael said, though there was a hint of amusement in his voice that echoed like space beyond time. Aster smirked.

“I'm only going to exist for a few minutes more, might as well have fun while I can.”

Michael chortled. It was a nice sound, a good one to die to, Aster supposed, as he hopped onto the bed and lay down. Duma placed himself at Aster's head and smiled.

“Here to give me dreams?” Aster murmured. Duma nodded. Duma never spoke. “Make 'em good, then.” Another nod, and Aster closed his eyes.

The dreams _were_ good. They were sweet, and they had Jack in them, and they felt so real they almost made him cry with what he was losing. He knew nothing of what was going on outside these dreams, nor did he care. It was enough to stop existing to thoughts of long embraces and wicked laughter.

It seemed to be taking an awfully long time, and snatches broke through into Aster's dreams.

...CAN'T SEEM TO DO IT...

“I swear, Samael, if this is your idea of a joke...”

I TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY, URIEL. DO NOT ASSUME. IT IS TRULY NOT WORKING.

Aster opened a wary eye. “What's not working?”

YOUR NON-EXISTENCE.

“Ah.” Aster piped down. He had an idea of why it wasn't working, but he wasn't about to tell them. He caught sight of Duma's knowing wink and winked back.

“Samael...”

DON'T YOU 'SAMAEL' ME, Samael said. IT'S NOT MY FAULT.

Aster felt Uriel's rage like a firebrand against his skin. He winced.

“You could strip him of his power?” Gabriel suggested, because he was fond of that. Raphael made a noise like an angry chicken.

“Please, Uriel, just... let him go!” he begged. Aster leant up on his elbows, biting his lip. Uriel was not famed for his leniency.

“And let him fall back into his ways?” Uriel said, incensed.

AND WHY WOULD THAT BE WRONG? Samael asked. Uriel looked horrified that such a question could even be uttered, but Samael never cared about anything. I MEAN, IT'S NOT AS IF HE'S HARMING ANYONE. THE WORLD IS CHANGED, URIEL. YOU SHOULD LEARN TO CHANGE WITH IT.

Aster marvelled slightly at how Samael managed to get away with anything. He supposed that being the Angel of Death got you automatic respect and the same sort of license with words that being old got you on Earth.

“I'm not...” Uriel turned to look at Aster, his eyes burning furiously.

**_HE SHALL GO._ **

The voice rang out with authority, diving straight into their very spirits, and everyone knew that the Metatron had spoken. Uriel, finally, let his shoulders slump.

“Very well.” He turned and left, shedding his body as he went and returning incorporeal. There was a final shockwave of furious energy, and he was gone. Aster could barely believe his luck.

“This is... This is absolutely ridiculous,” he breathed. It could all have been a dying dream Duma gave him, but it wouldn't have lasted this long. Tentatively he swung his legs over the edge of the stone bed and eyed everyone. “I can really go home?”

Raphael beamed at him. “Apparently!” he exclaimed, hugging Aster tightly. He'd always been so sensitive. Michael gave him a brief nod with what passed for a smile on his freckled face, and went, long coat flapping around his ankles and red hair glinting in the eternal, soft light.

YOU ARE A LUCKY BEING, ISRAFEL, Samael said. TELL ME, WAS THIS INTENTIONAL?

Aster shrugged helplessly. “Nope.” It was obvious Samael knew exactly how Aster had saved himself from non-existence. Raphael gave the both of them a puzzled looked, but when neither seemed inclined to dispel his confusion, he gave up.

VERY GOOD, THEN.

And Samael was gone.

.

Duma and Zachriel saw him back to Earth. Zachriel was still wringing her hands and looking worried.

“I'm still _really_ sorry,” she said, making a face. Aster waved a hand and snorted.

“It doesn't matter,” he said.

“He's very cute!” she offered as consolation, making Aster splutter. Duma's Grace spoke up for him, and Zachriel winked. “I'll show you later,” she assured him in a decidedly audible whisper. Aster rolled his eyes.

“I have to go,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Maybe we'll come visit some time!” Zachriel said. “I like Earth, I want to be assigned there more.” She hugged Aster tightly and beamed at him.

Next Duma stepped forward, his hands held out. Aster took them and their Grace mingled for just a moment in goodbye. Then, with a smile, Aster left for home.

It was early evening when he got back. The shop was dark and still in exactly the same state as he'd left it, though the police tape was new. It took two phone calls, the arrival of a squad car and reassurances that no, he _hadn't_ been kidnapped before they would let him back in. According to his phone, it had been a week.

After waving his hand and returning the shop to normal, he ascended the stairs.

The flat was dark and deserted. In fact, it looked as if it hadn't been lived in for a while. The bed was still unmade and there was still a used mug in the sink, filled with water that had turned stagnant and made Aster gag a little.

“Crikey,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair.

At first he contemplated looking for Jack, but he recognised the futility of that plan quite quickly. This was a big town, after all, and he also had no idea where Jack liked to haunt, or even where he'd lived before steamrollering into Aster's living spaces. He had no clues.

There was the vague chance Jack might just simply turn up tomorrow morning. It didn't seem particularly likely.

The worst thing about being a metaphysical being was that sleep was an entirely unnecessary indulgence, and for once, Aster felt that that was an extremely unfair state of affairs. It meant lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and worrying, and not even being able to drift off because sleep was something that had to consciously happen. Thoughts about Jack chased themselves around his mind like greyhounds after a mechanical hare, and he couldn't do anything to get ride of them.

He was glad for dawn's arrival. At least he could open the shop and do something productive.

He found it surprising, though, when he smelt coffee. Expensive coffee, maybe like that kind that came out of the arse of some creature. Aster rose, dressed and headed cautiously to the kitchen.

“Koz?”

Kozmotis, Duke of Hell, raised his mug in a morning salute and sipped. He was doing a crossword in a newspaper. It was probably the New York Times.

“Want some? Finest Arabian, just picked it up.”

“Where's Jack?”

Kozmotis looked up. “Why would you want to know about that?” He didn't ask with the sort of tones he usually did, which was gleeful teasing. No, this was sincere curiosity. After five thousand years, you learnt to read someone.

Aster sat at the table, ignoring the coffee, and looked right into Kozmotis's eyes. “Seriously, where is he?”

Kozmotis lowered his paper, frowning slightly. “He was called back, or so I heard. I finished my spell elsewhere.”

Aster slumped down and rubbed his face. “It was too sudden,” he muttered. “He would at least have cleaned the mug...”

Kozmotis leant forward and placed his mug on the table with the sort of finality that heralds a discussion. “Was he staying here?” he asked.

Aster nodded absently. “He...” He swallowed.

Kozmotis looked positively elated at that. “He _tempted_ you? _You_ , the most uptight angel in all of creation, Stick-up-the-arse Israfel, _sinned_ with a junior demon? Oh, Lords of Hell, that is simply _precious_!”

Kozmotis yelped when Aster lunged at him. With his face barely an inch away from the demon's, Aster demonstrated the many advantages of wearing a tie in front of an angry, worried angel. “It wasn't just _sinning_!” Aster snarled.

Kozmotis swallowed. “Very well, I understand.”

Aster let him go, leaving Kozmotis to massage his pale neck with long, spidery fingers, and slumped back into his seat. He rubbed his face.

“You've got to tell me, Koz,” he said. “Is he all right?”

Kozmotis made a face. “I... From what I heard I'd been sent back precisely because Jack had been recalled. I don't know, but I heard office rumours of something being wrong with the boy.”

“Wrong...?” Aster murmured, confused. Then he remembered: his Grace. He groaned. “Shit.”

“What?” Kozmotis asked sharply.

“I... He had a run in with some lowlifes from Downstairs. Got his wing broken and I...”

It was Kozmotis's turn to groan and facepalm. “You healed him, didn't you?”

Aster nodded, cursing himself internally.

“Oh, great. You've probably single-handedly got the boy sentenced to four thousand years of torture for fraternising with you, you know that? Fornication is fine, but if he's running around with your Grace inside him...”

“That's the only thing that saved me,” Aster blurted. Kozmotis looked up.

“What?”

“I had a hearing. Uriel sentenced me to...” he trailed off, swallowing.

Kozmotis made a horrified face. “He didn't even give you the option to Fall?”

“Well, he did, but...”

“Ah, yes, ever the _angel_ ,” Kozmotis sneered. “What you mean is that Samael couldn't do anything to you because Jack contained your Grace and keep you alive. That's... remarkable. Astounding, even.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully.

Aster buried his head in his hands. Hell was untouchable. Hell was somewhere he simply couldn't go. He couldn't barge down there and rescue Jack like some knight in shining armour.

“You really love him, don't you?”

Aster looked up. “Isn't it obvious?” he mumbled.

Kozmotis sighed. “Fine, I'll see what I can do.”

“Do?” Aster echoed. Kozmotis scoffed as he stood.

“I'm a Duke of Hell,” he said, offended at Aster's lack of faith. “I do wield some power Down Below, you know.”

And with that, he was gone. Aster made a face. It would take a whole can of air freshener to get rid of that stink of sulphur.

.

Hell, Sartre had written, was other people. Of course, he had no idea what Hell could actually be like, and therefore every interpretation of the quote was ridiculous and unrealistic. Some of its denizens thrived in the darkness and heat and smells of the Netherworld. Others, such as himself, didn't. Even the cushier low-end offices and chambers of Prince Lucifer himself tended to get stuffy and overbearing.

But the worst places were the surface ones, the places where the souls of the evil were tormented for eternity.

Contrary to popular belief, only the truly irredeemably evil had a place in Hell. When God Himself had condoned extermination more than once, then Hell had to dish out the justice the world so desperately needed. However, the worst tortures came to befall the wrongdoers than came out of these walls in the first place.

He strolled past screams and the sounds of exquisite, horrific agony, past the stench of burning and rotting flesh and past the taste of fear on the air, and reached where he was looking for.

He grimaced. He was rather fond of Jack, all things considered, and seeing him hanging from the ceiling, dripping ichor that hissed when it touched the burning metal floor, wasn't exactly pleasant.

The boy was naked, hanging from wings that hung on by a mere thread of sinew. They'd skinned his chest, hooked at his face, cut off his fingers, and broken both his legs in enough places that there was more bone visible than skin. Ichor ran down from empty, torn eye sockets. Kozmotis could still see the brands of Aster's hands on his wing.

Kozmotis had no powers of healing, and he clenched his fists in anger.

“You there!”

A lesser demon hunkered forward, distorted and misshapen. The torturers were never intelligent, just merrily sadistic. It tugged its forelock at him and revealed several rows of sharp black teeth in what it probably supposed was a subservient grin.

“The prisoner is to be handed over to me,” Kozmotis said icily. “Snap to it!”

It took a while, due to the lack of grace with which torturers did anything that wasn't torture, but soon Kozmotis had Jack's arm around his shoulders and was hauling him from the torture rooms, one step at a time. It didn't help that Jack could barely focus through his pain, crying out with that tasteless voice of legion at every step and twitching like a mad thing.

“Don't worry, we'll get you sorted,” Kozmotis said. “But you'll owe me a new suit. This was _Armani_.”

.

It took four days and unlimited patience before Jack was healed completely. Far from the torture chambers and within the influences of Lucifer's higher power, Jack's body was free to knit itself back together, piece by wretched piece, until he finally woke up. That was on the third day, and it was only his wings left by then.

He whimpered into the black silk of Kozmotis's sheets, and the Duke of Hell watched him twitch and writhe from over on his chaise. He'd never actually envisioned having to _sleep_ on the damn thing, but he made a mental note to no longer sacrifice comfort for design. His bed linen was ruined with ichor and shed skin, nothing a few handwaves couldn't deal with, but still... He had actually _bought_ those. He didn't like to see them end like that.

Ah, the things he did for friendship.

“So, you're awake?”

Jack raised his head and made an unhappy noise. He moved his head as if he still couldn't see, which Kozmotis supposed he couldn't. Sight was a complicated piece of machinery to recreate.

“Think you're up to moving topside?” Kozmotis asked.

“T-t-tops-s-side?” Jack asked, his tongue thick and his voice layered with a thousand others. A ridiculous little trick Lucifer seemed to find entertaining in the newly spawned.

“Aster's waiting for you.”

He didn't think he'd ever seen anyone move faster. Jack was stumbling out of bed, wings trailing behind him, and he tripped over himself before he'd barely taken a step. Kozmotis caught him with a sigh.

“I think that answers that question,” he said with a hint of amusement. He guided Jack back to the bed and laid him back down after cleaning the sheets with a second thought. “Right. We'll give it another day.”

While Jack drifted back off into the sort of metaphysical coma that sped up the healing process, Kozmotis tentatively reached out with what was left of his own Grace. Shredded and turned black with the Abyss and sin, it wasn't much, but it could still feel. It poked gently at Jack's veins, spreading wispy tendrils along them in reconnaissance, and he felt it.

It was bright and warm and it lived in Jack's veins like it belonged there. Some part of Kozmotis, long forgotten, twinged with melancholy, for what he had had and had no longer, the warm of Heaven, its perfection and beauty. He loved being a demon, but like every demon, he longed for what he no longer had.

With a sigh, he withdrew, musing on the young demon's fate. He had no problem believing that Hell and its many bureaucrats would not stand for this. He also knew perfectly well that he would have to call on every favour he was owed to get Jack out of this mess. He also had a sneaky suspicion that this might lead to a very drastic change in the boy, if this relationship continued.

That was, of course, mere speculation. He chose not to dwell on it, and amused himself with the crossword he'd left at Aster's, leaving Jack to put the final parts of himself back together.

.

It was mid-afternoon when Kozmotis came sauntering through the door, his suit as freshly and sharply pressed as if he hadn't just rescued a junior demon and spent four days sleeping on an uncomfortable Victorian chaise. Aster, however, hadn't even bothered. He had four days stubble, he'd been wearing the same shirt for three and he hadn't opened the shop today or yesterday. If he'd cared to look in the mirror, he would have seen a trainwreck, but Aster was vaguely conscious of the sin of vanity. Or something.

Kozmotis stepped aside, flourishing a hand in presentation. Jack was standing there, biting his lip, rubbing one arm with the other.

The disbelieving staring didn't last long. Aster had his arms around Jack before he could even realise what he was doing, holding him close and vowing to never let him go again.

“You stink,” Jack mumbled, but apparently that didn't deter him from wriggling closer and pressing his face to Aster's shoulder.

“What the bloody hell happened?” Aster asked, pulling away. Jack shook his head.

“They came for me and... and...” He shook his head again, shivering.

“Fine, we don't need to talk about it.” Aster looked up to Kozmotis, who was politely staring right at them with an amused smirk. “Thank you.”

Kozmotis waved a hand. “You'll owe me one, that's fine. I shall, however, leave you to your sentimental reunion, as I do not relish nausea in the slightest.”

With that, he left, leaving nothing behind but a hint of shadow and a whiff of sulphur. But Aster and Jack didn't care. Aster cupped Jack's cheeks, caressing them with his thumbs, gazing into his eyes.

“I thought I'd lost you,” he murmured. Jack took a deep shuddering breath, placing his hands on Aster's.

“So did I,” he said. “I was... scared.”

“Don't be anymore,” Aster said fiercely. He pressed his lips to Jack's and Jack kissed back, fervent and desperate.

.

The sunset burnt bright on the horizon, fiery and majestic. Jack was settled in Aster's arms, back pressed to chest, head tilted slightly back and knees pulled up to his chest. It felt like they were settled there for the long haul – not that Aster cared.

“You've never told me your real name,” Jack said, running a finger along Aster's forearm, absent-mindedly tracing the tattoos he'd chosen to have there.

“Ah... It's Israfel,” Aster said. “Yours? It can't be Jack.”

“...Camio.”

“You are definitely _not_ Camio, I've _met_ the bloke. Weird obsession with peacock feathers.”

Jack laughed. “No, no, it's a recycled name. The hivemother who oversaw where I spawned really liked him, so we all got named some variation on that.” He snuggled in closer, tugging Aster's arms tighter around himself. The kid had always been touchy-feely, but now it seemed he practically wanted to merge with him, become one super Jack/Aster entity. Not that Aster minded.

“I'm still Jack, though. I really don't like Camio.”

“Same for me,” Aster mumbled, nuzzling into Jack's hair, breathing deeply. Jack always smelt good, like possibilities, though there was something else there, something new and strange, something almost... wintry. Aster ignored it in favour of the possibilities. It would have been simply shameful not to take them.

Jack laughed, low and wicked, when Aster's lips began playing along the side of his neck. “Oh, _that's_ how it is, hm?”

Aster growled low in his throat, and it all went downhill from there.

.

It happened sometime during the night, when the reunion sex had been sinfully sweet and Jack had thrown his head back with a delicious cry, their movements in perfect counterpoint to one another. It started as ripples, golden ripples that existed on another plane that no mortal could ever feel, and steadily became a tidal wave, something powerful and magnificent that took Aster's breath away, leaving his spirit reeling.

He opened his eyes.

“What the fuck?” he croaked.

Jack blinked. “Huh?” He flexed his shoulders. “Something wrong?”

Aster reached up a hand and ran his fingers along Jack's exposed left wing. It was no longer leathery and branded with Aster's handprints. It was pure white, like freshly fallen snow, and it glowed, though not with warm gold, like Aster's own. It was a pale, silky blue, chilly and sharp.

And that went without mentioning his hair. It hard turned as snowy as his wing, pale and bright, almost blinding. His skin had become slightly paler, the flush on his cheeks a dusty pink and shoulders.

“Wow,” Aster murmured.

Jack brought a wing into view and his eyes widened, revealing how blueblue _blue_ they'd become, blue like the lines in frozen water. “Did I just ascend? Did I just ascend and become an angel? Did I just ascend _on top_ of you?” A wide grin spread over his face. “Kinky!”

Aster let his head fall back and groaned. “That's just bloody great. Who got that bloody idea?”

“The Big Guy in the Sky?” Jack wondered, shifting slightly – just to make Aster grunt and arch – and spreading himself across Aster, kissing his chin and neck. “These are pretty cool. They feel totally different to my other ones.” He stretched his wings and flapped them for emphasis, making the loose sketches on Aster's desk snap and float to the floor.

“Oi!” Aster complained. Jack gave him the sort of innocent smile a cat wore, which fooled no one.

“This feels pretty good,” he said. “Weird.” He looked at his fingers, rippled them experimentally. Aster lifted his hand and took Jack's, and let a sliver of his Grace flow through. It met Jack's and entwined with it, spreading into each other with a delicious glow. Jack closed his eyes with a gasp.

“Wow,” he breathed, trembling gently. “That was good. Do it again.”

“Never had sex the angel way, have you?” Aster said with a smirk. Jack opened his eyes.

“Well, duh, of course not! You?”

“Once or twice,” Aster said. The merging of Essence and Grace wasn't exactly counted as sinful. It had been so bloody long ago he couldn't even remember it, it practically didn't count. “You'll like it.”

“Can we still fuck like we do usually, though?” Jack asked, almost plaintively, like a puppy being denied a favourite toy. Aster chuckled, hauling himself up until Jack was sitting in lap and letting his own wings out. He wrapped them around Jack, pulling closer, feathers against feathers and naked skin, and the newly-made angel laughed, still wicked, still intoxicating.

“It's not about that, though, is it?” Aster murmured, tilting Jack's face up, raising his eyebrows. Jack licked his lips.

“No, it's not,” he replied, surging up for the kiss.

And somewhere in the throes of passion, in the blending of bodies and Grace, they heard a voice, though neither of them knew where from. It said only one thing.

It said, like moonlight in their minds, **_CAMAEL._**


	4. Bartender AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 4th of July, 'Murricans! Have a present!
> 
> This was the first oneshot I wrote for this fic, so have it.

There's no way that kid should be in here. He's far too young to be eighteen.

Aster keeps an eye on him as he dances, the lissom flow of him that speaks of professional or at least student in the art, and waits for him to head up to the bar and grin at him. He's seen his fair share of flirtatious in his time, but this is something else. He beats down the flicker it births in his abdomen.

“Coke, please,” the kid asks, as innocent as lascivious can get. Aster scowls. Well, he didn't ask for alcohol, at least. Aster serves him, eyes narrowed. This kid's up to something, he can sense it.

“Do you have a straw?” he wonders. Aster almost considers saying no, but there's a guy right next to them who's sporting a cocktail with a straw right now, so that would be a petty lie. He hands one over, the boy takes it, makes sure his fingers brush Aster's with a smirk. Aster beats a hasty retreat to the far end of the bar, to serve a baker's dozen of Martinis to a hen night, the only women in the place, making enough noise for fifty of them. 

The kid drinks, Aster serves others but he can't tear his eyes away from those lips around that straw, the way that Adam's apple bobs when he swallows, those half-lidded eyes that seem to almost burn into his skin.

He groans over one of the beer taps. This isn't doing his Barman Neutrality any good. He really needs to talk to North about this, Phil letting kids in the place. Could get them into trouble. They're the only gay bar in Burgess, they have enough trouble already in this small town.

The kid pays, smirks, and leaves. There's a phone number scrawled across the five dollar note.

Aster resolves not to call it.

.

Two days later, the kid's back. This time he comes right up to the bar, pouting and Aster tries so hard to ignore him. He's no good at it.

“You didn't call,” he says accusingly. Aster clears his throat.

“Didn't call what?” It's easier to pretend he didn't see the number, which is actually safely in his wallet. It's been there for two days, since Aster swapped it for one that didn't have a federal law infringement in marker pen on it. He couldn't really give that one out as change, it could end up on the other side of the country and perverts might call it.

It's just common sense. It's not like the banknote was burning a hole in his wallet and mind, after all.

The kid, however, isn't exactly easily thwarted. He pulls out a marker pen and grabs Aster's hand before he can protest.

“The name's Jack,” he says. His grip is deceptively tight. “Call me.”

Aster can only blink at his barefaced cheek at defacing another human being as the kid smirks and heads off to the dancefloor. He dances mostly on his own, shunning everyone else who tries to get a little closer, and Aster can't help but think that perhaps it's a show, just for him. It feels like it, every time Jack meets his gaze, there's electricity, enticing, delicious lightning on the air.

Aster's resolve is wavering.

.

Another two days and a thorough scrubbing with cleaning alcohol later, and Aster still hasn't called. He shouldn't. He doesn't even know if the kid is legal or not (which he probably isn't). He's not going to fuck his life up by calling a twink who's probably jail bait.

He hates karaoke night, because not only can everyone violently not sing, even when inebriated, but Tooth keeps trying to get him to sing in that insistent, childish way of his. Aster doesn't like singing in public, it's saved for the shower and he would rather keep the fact he knows all of _Les Miserables_ and _Oklahoma!_ by heart a well-kept secret.

Aster groans when he sees who's taken hold of the microphone. Jack bows and sets his gaze firmly on Aster.

_“I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock, cock  
Your peacock, cock  
Your peacock, cock, cock, cock  
Your peacock  
I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock, cock  
Your peacock, cock  
Your peacock, cock, cock, cock  
Your peacock!”_

Aster buries his face in his hands, groaning in humiliation as everyone starts whooping. The kid's voice isn't anything special, but he can sort of carry a tune without dropping it too much. It's more the _movements_ that make the performance, the hip thrusts and the undulating and the strutting. It's certainly a spectacle.

_“I want the jaw-dropping, eye-popping, head-turning, body-shocking  
I want my heart-throbbing, ground-shaking, shoe-stomping, amazing!”_

Then Jack is right there, the bar empty enough for him to hop up and sit there, singing right to Aster. Aster's face burns. Why, oh _why_ , do they have a mike without wires?

_“Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock?  
Don't be a chicken, boy, stop acting like a bi-atch  
I'ma peace out if you don't give me the pay-off  
Come on, baby, let me see  
What you hiding underneath!”_

Jack's about as subtle as a brick to the face. Set on fire. The crowd seems to appreciate it, if the hoots and cheers and decidedly lewd suggestions are anything to go by. Aster wishes he could do something other than stand there in abject humiliation. He's never been chased by someone so bloody insistent before, and insistent in such an imaginative way. He also wishes he wasn't quite so turned on by this little show, Jack's complete lack of inhibitions and even the simple way he moves, which is positively sinful.

He slides off with a grace Aster can only define as cat-like and stalks back to the stage, and there's a decided wiggle to that pert arse in those tight jeans as he goes.

If Aster has to get Tooth to substitute him for a moment to splash water on his face, stare in the mirror and take care of his, well, peacock, well... could anyone blame him?

.

Two nights later, it's the one-a-month whatever evening. Tooth's apparently been reading things he shouldn't, because he seems a bit fixated with Vera Lynn lately and starts crying whenever he hears _Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart_ , so that's what's playing at the moment. It puzzles the usual patrons, but they embrace it. You rarely get to slow-dance in clubs now anyway, and there's nothing quite as nice as slow-dancing close to someone. Tooth is in charge of the music, and what he says, _goes_. Aster's grandmother brought him up on music like this, he knows them all, so he doesn't mind even if it isn't his scene at all.

“I like this one,” a familiar voice says. Aster turns sharply, but Jack isn't, for one, looking at him. He has his chin on his hand, looking at the dancefloor. He's humming along with _Lili Marlene_.

“You know it?” Aster asks, surprised.

“Yeah. Downloaded it after I read a few World War Two novels,” he says. At least the kid reads, Aster thinks. “It's really pretty.”

Aster has to agree. The next to start is _A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square_ , and Jack turns to look at him.

“Wanna dance?” he asks. Aster half-considers dredging up disdain, but he can't, not to this music. Not to this kid.

“Gotta tend the bar,” he says, apologetic. Jack looks around.

“Don't see anyone ordering right now,” he says. He offers his hand, tilts his head invitingly. “C'mon. Won't take long.”

Aster shouldn't. He really shouldn't. He should refuse and stay where he is, ignore the invitation, demur politely, but against his head, his hand reaches out and he scoots around the bar.

Jack's waist is slight under his hand, his hand slim in Aster's own. He moves perfectly – he's a dancer, after all – and lets Aster lead. They sway in time with the music, like they're dancing on clouds, and Aster tries to keep his heart under control. Dancing with someone like this is always so intimate, so different to any other kind, it shuts the world out and keeps it at bay, and suddenly it's just the two of them and the music. Jack keeps his gaze lowered, flushes prettily, and there's a tiny smile that tugs at Aster, worms its way into him and buries itself deep. It the kind of smile that makes you fall in love with it.

The song is over too soon, and Aster pulls away, so reluctantly. There's a wolf-whistle, to which Aster replies with a good-natured exhortation to rack off, and he returns to the bar. Jack tucks his hair back, looking younger and so much more vulnerable than before, with all his insistence and cockiness. Aster offers him a smile, a private smile, and Jack smiles back.

.

The next afternoon, Aster calls.


	5. Stuck Someplace Together in Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not technically winter, but it's snow, so it'll do, I guess.

“I can't bloody believe this.”

Bunnymund sneezes, huddled in the corner of the cave mouth, shivering slightly. The world outside is pure white, the sky, the ground... everything. It hurts Bunnymund's eyes to look at it, but he can't turn away, either, mostly from disbelief. He'd thought he'd timed it perfectly. He'd been so _very_ much mistaken.

“We're up in the middle of the Alps, what did you expect?” Jack pokes his head out, the flakes landing and getting lost in his hair.

“Can't you do something about it?” Bunnymund grumbles, ruffling his fur up in an attempt to warm up. It doesn't do much good. He's got his winter coat, but 'winter coat' in Australia means practically no difference to the summer one. Jack makes a face at his suggestion.

“This is all Mother Nature's doing,” he replies. “I can't do anything about this. Besides, it's my off season.”

Bunnymund huffs, retreating deeper into the shallow cave. He'd only come up for some new alpine samples. Nature is evolving continuously, and Bunnymund likes to have the latest set of flowers in his garden. It's immense enough that it has one of every flower in the world, that ever was and is, and he hopes to keep it that way.

But, apparently, Mother Nature is feeling particularly fickle today. Not that she ever _doesn't_ feel fickle, but a respite every now and again would be nice.

“We just have to wait it out,” Jack says, sitting and crossing his legs.

There's silence for a while, and it feels a little bit awkward. Jack drums his fingers on his staff, making the odd sort of faces you make when you're waiting for the other person to say something. Bunnymund stays silent. He hadn't had to make small talk in forever, and he never was very good at it anyway.

“So... why'd you invite me along?” Jack asks.

Bunnymund doesn't look at him. He needs to find an excuse, and quickly, because he can't just come out with 'got a bit of a crush, mate, if you don't mind, so I wanted to spend some time with you'. It would sound absolutely ridiculous, for one thing, and for another he doesn't exactly know how Jack would take it. Probably not well: your average humanoid spirit teenage spirit isn't usually into alien lagomorphs.

And he probably wouldn't believe him, anyway. Not with their history, not with them being polar opposites personality-wise and even season wise. He'd probably think it was a joke. But it wouldn't be. There's something about Jack that lights up Bunnymund's days in a way the other Guardians do not. There's his laughter, his joy at the world, his appreciation of the little things as well, his ability to be respectful when he wants. Jack can be a little shit, but it's only one facet to him, and Bunnymund finds great joy in discovering the others.

He shrugs. “Thought you'd like to tag along. You always pop up anyway.”

Jack chuckles. “Yeah, guess I do. Um, thanks... thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.”

Bunnymund risks a glance at him, but Jack turns away before he can get a look at the kid's face. His tone was sincere, so that's not the problem. The problem is the little hint of hope Bunnymund can taste on the air. Hope is his centre, he feels it, he smells it, he knows how it tastes... what could that hope mean? He doesn't dare to hope himself. He can inspire it in others, but in himself it only tends to lead to disappointment.

“Got any way to pass the time, then, Kangaroo?”

Bunnymund huffs, hunkering down and trying to fluff up his fur even further. It doesn't make much of a difference, of course.

“How about I Spy?” Jack suggests teasingly. He dodges the punch to the arm with a laugh. “Ok, then, no! How about... Truth or Dare?”

Bunnymund turns to scowl at him. “And what dares could we do stuck in this bloody cave beyond the Black bloody Stump?” Not that he's agreeing with the idea, that would be simply preposterous, because Truth or Dare is a stupid game. Jack shrugs.

“We rack them up for when we're out of here. I can tell you now, Cottontail, I got some doozies for you!” Jack's grin is wicked, and it stirs things it probably shouldn't deep within parts of himself that Bunnymund had forgotten existed, parts that have long lain dormant. He doesn't even know _how_ , because by all rights he shouldn't find Jack attractive at all. But he does. Oh, Moon above, he _does_.

He snorts. “Bloody stupid idea,” he mutters. Jack pouts, he can see it out of the corner of his eye.

“How about we just do the truth bit, then?” he proposes, giving Bunnymund the sort of look that says 'Chicken!' with an elongated 'E' in an annoying sing-song voice. Bunnymund's eyes narrow. “You don't wanna race a rabbit” extends to challenges of any kind, especially from Jack Frost, the larrikin.

“Fine!” he declares, not bothering to think about what he could be getting into. The truth is a frightening, dangerous thing, and a game that involves the truth could lead to unfortunate confessions. He doesn't even bother thinking about that, though. He pushes it to the back of his mind, ignoring it. He'll go wherever this leads him.

“Wanna go first?” Jack prompts, sitting forward, no longer leaning on his hands as if he's on display. Bunnymund valiantly tears his gaze away from the curve of the boy's spine and pretends to think in an effort to regain his composure.

“All right... what was the Blizzard of '68 about?”

Jack's eyes go wide for a mere second before he hitches on a grin. Bunnymund sees his hand go blindly for his staff and hold it tight, trying to hide it with his other arm.

“Well, y'know, it was for fun...”

“This is a game of Truth, Frost,” Bunnymund reminds him with an arched eyebrow. Jack swallows.

“I, er...” He reaches up to rub at his forehead. “Well... It was... it was an accident.”

“An _accident_?” Bunnymund didn't mean to sound so incredulous, but, well... a huge bloody snowstorm that covered half of the American North-East wasn't something he expected to see on Easter bloody Sunday.

“I didn't mean it! It just... happened,” Jack finishes lamely. He doesn't meet Bunnymund's eyes as he says it, which makes Bunnymund that more suspicious.

“Was something wrong?” he asks.

“Listen, I answered! It's my turn!”

Bunnymund rolls his eyes. He just can't win with this kid. “Fine!” he snaps, waving a paw.

“So... ever had a girlfriend?” Jack asks slyly, all smirk. Bunnymund snorts.

“Of course I've had a girlfriend!” He says. He pretends not to notice the way Jack's smirk fades a little. “It was years before Earth, of course.”

“Whoa, what do you mean, 'years before Earth'?” Jack interrupts. It's Bunnymund's turn to smirk now.

“Ah, only one question per turn!” he says. “My turn. Now... what happened that made you let loose that blizzard?”

Jack's puzzlement turns to a deep scowl. “Look, I'm trying to _lighten_ the atmosphere, here!”

“Well, maybe I don't _want_ it to be lightened!” Bunnymund retorts, folding his arms. “Just come out with it!” He sighs. “You can tell me, y'know. We're mates, aren't we?”

“Does that count as two questions?” Jack says petulantly, folding his own arms and hunkering in on himself. Bunnymund snorts and places a paw on his shoulder. The hoodie makes them look broader than they actually are, he's so slight underneath all that cotton and wool. Jack glances at his paw, swallows, and seems to uncurl, like a hedgehog that's gotten over its scare. 

“I... I wasn't in a very good place,” he mumbles. “I was... lonely. And angry. And it just... got to be too much. I didn't really mean it. I'd been bottling it up for so long, I...” He makes abortive hand gestures, futile, jerky things, half-explosions with his fingers.

Bunnymund doesn't know what to say. What can you say, when someone confesses something like that to you? He swallows, his paw tightens slightly, comfortingly. “I'm sorry, mate. For misunderstanding.”

Jack shakes his head. “Doesn't matter now, does it?” He give Bunnymund's paw another look, his fingers twitch like he wants to raise his own hand and place it on the Pooka's, but he doesn't. Bunnymund wishes he would, because it would give him an excuse not to let go.

“Your turn, Frostbite,” he murmurs, bringing his paw back.

“Um... so... 'before Earth'. Explanation, please?”

Bunnymund chuckles. “I was born long before Earth even existed, you know. Back in the Golden Age, when the Lunanoffs ruled and Pitch wasn't Pitch.”

“Wasn't Pitch?” Jack echoes, bewildered. Bunnymund clears his throat.

“That can be your next question,” he says tartly. Jack huffs, but remains silent. “Right, well, back then I lived on the Pookan homeworld. It was a gorgeous place, so green, with great, underground cities and grass towns on the plains and...” He shakes his head, nostalgically. “It was magnificent. And then, billions of years ago, I crash-landed here on Earth. It was bloody hard to find a place that wasn't molten lava.”

Jack's expression is almost cartoonish with its exaggerated shock. Bunnymund chuckles, though beneath the surface there is worry. Jack is so very, very much younger than him. He probably won't even be able to fathom Bunnymund's sheer age.

“Right, my turn. So have _you_ ever had a girlfriend?” An honest answer to this question would put his mind at ease. Not his heart, of course, because the heart ignores all common sense and logic in favour of throwing itself at sharp rocks like a suicidal ship. Jack winces.

“Um... no. I don't really, er, _like_ girls. I mean, I _like_ them, I like Tooth and stuff, but not in, uh, _that_ way...” His face is covered in a fine layer of frost, and he looks like he's in physical pain. Bunnymund debates letting him squirm for a bit, but he's not that cruel. Especially not when hope begins to dawn in his own chest.

“'Sokay, Frostbite. I get it. Don't worry.” He offers a smile, which Jack gratefully mirrors. The silence drags on for a moment, still and expectant like some sort of onlooker there in the cave with them. It hovers, watching with bated breath. Jack inches forward, something potent in his eyes, and Bunnymund tears his gaze away. It's like trying to rip steel with bare paws.

“Right. So. Your turn.”

Jack blinks, seems to come to his senses, and that frost is back, all over his cheeks, like a blush that's purely Jack Frost. It would be pretty, Bunnymund suspects, in the right light. Not that Jack is ever _not_ pretty, but... it would make him even prettier.

“So, what happened to her?” Jack asks eventually, and no prizes for guessing who he's talking about. “Is she off somewhere in the great wide universe? Did you break up?”

“One question at a time, Ice Block!” Bunnymund grumbles, giving himself a moment to recover from the mental slap. He's asking about _her_ , and Bunnymund isn't sure he's ready for this. He's never told anyone about her before.

The memory of her death also brings back the horror of being the only one left. He'd been able to push it to the side, deal with it somehow, ignore it in favour of his new friends and his purpose. But now... Jack knows nothing of the genocide and Pitch's madness. He knows nothing of the Golden Age and Kozmotis Pitchiner. Bunnymund takes a deep breath, steels himself. He is strong. He will not break again, not now.

“She... she died. Along with everybody else.” He stares ahead at the white brilliance of the world outside, at the flurry beyond, at the ragged edges of the snowflakes where they fall on dark grey stone. “Pitch killed them all.”

Jack is silent. Bunnymund turns, and the look on Jack's face hurts him.

“I... I'm sorry, Bunny. I didn't know...”

Bunnymund sighs. “Course you didn't know. Who could have told you? It doesn't matter, it was forever ago anyway.” The pain has returned, the ache of loss and the void within at the knowledge of being completely and utterly _alone_ , but... it's a blunt twinge, not the all-encompassing agony it used to be.

Jack, to his surprise, scoots closer, dares to place a hand on Bunnymund's upper arm. “I really am sorry, Bunny.” He's quiet for a moment. “Were they all like you?”

“Giant bipedal rabbits?” Bunnymund asks wryly. Jack chuckles, shrugging. “Yeah, they were all like me. We were Pooka. We're mammals, in case you're wondering,” he adds. Better to throw that out there now, right? “But... we come from pretty far away. Warrior scholars, philosophers and engineers, that's what we were.”

Jack's expression is one of awe, though Bunnymund is tired of talking about himself. These are things for tea in the Warren, not Truth in a mountain cave. “Right, so, my turn.” He struggles to think of a question for a moment. “Ever had a boyfriend, then?”

Jack's frost comes back at full potency, spreading down his neck this time. “I... never had the chance,” he mumbles. “There were guys I liked, but... either I couldn't, because they weren't and if we were caught...” He shudders, and Bunnymund feels a rush of disgust for humanity and its foolish ideas of right and wrong. “And then, well... I was invisible. What was the point if no one could see me?” He laughs, but it's brittle and hollow, something that doesn't suit Jack at all.

“There are spirits, Jack,” Bunnymund murmurs. “Other spirits.”

Jack shrugs, and to Bunnymund it looks too casual. “Yeah, well... maybe I didn't like them.” He glances at Bunnymund, just a split second, but their eyes meet and Bunnymund is struck by that gaze if its a physical thing. Jack clears his throat.

“So, tell me... why did you _really_ invite me along today?”

Bunnymund raises his head, his nose twitches. “What do you mean by that?”

Jack snorts. “Come on, Bunny, I'm not stupid. There's an ulterior motive, here. Just tell me!”

“You want the truth?”

“We're playing Truth, aren't we?”

Bunnymund swallows. He doesn't look at Jack as he answers. The words are surprisingly easy to say. He thought they'd get stuck, that he'd have to force them out with his tongue. “I like you. As... as more than a friend.” He buries his face in his paws. There's no going back now. Everything's shot to pieces.

“Really?”

There's that hint of hope again, though this time it's not a hint, it's a full-blown assault on the senses. Bunnymund looks up, catches Jack's gaze, and... Moon above, there's such desperate longing in that face it's ridiculous. A joke half-flits through his mind, 'you're only allowed one question per turn', but it's not a game anymore, is it? He nods.

“Yes. Really.”

Jack all but throws himself at him, knocking him over. The sprite buries himself in Bunnymund's chest fur, clinging tightly, making a keening noise in the back of his throat.

“What the...?” Bunnymund's brain shuts down for a moment. This can't be happening, can it? This is his imagination, Sandy's dreamsand playing tricks on him, right? He bites the inside of his mouth – which is extremely painful and not something he'll be doing again in a hurry – but no, he still has an armful of jubilant and overly-affectionate winter sprite clinging to him for dear life.

“So... I take it the feeling's mutual?” he asks wryly. Jack lifts his head a tiny bit, only his eyes visible. They're wide and full of emotion as he nods slowly. “How did you...? I mean...” Bunnymund gestures to himself.

Jack actually lifts himself a little higher to answer that one, but he's not letting go. “I... I guess it didn't really... matter?” He bites his lip. “You don't think I'm weird, do you?” he says plaintively. Bunnymund laughs.

“Really, Frostbite, I can't talk. You're a human. You look nothing like a Pooka.” He cups Jack's cheek with a paw and Jack's eyes slide shut, pressing against the touch like he's been starved of it for centuries. Which, Bunnymund muses, he has. “It doesn't matter. Not to me.”

Jack sighs, open his eyes with a small smile. “Good,” he says. “Do you... do Pooka kiss?” he asks sheepishly.

Bunnymund frowns. “Not usually.” Jack looks so crestfallen at that that it almost makes Bunnymund laugh, but that would be mean. “We make exceptions, though,” he adds.

As if taking that as a cue, Jack surges forward, clumsily pressing his lips to Bunnymund's mouth. It's very awkward, but they'll make it work with practice, the Pooka hopes. He can always chin Jack as well, after all. When they pull apart, Jack looks as if his birthday's come early (and Bunnymund should really ask when it is, he should start to get him a present for it every now and again), cheeks frosty and grin lopsided and a little tipsy. Bunnymund chuckles, fits Jack's head under his chin. Jack takes the hint and snuggles down. He isn't as cold as Bunnymund expected him to be, and he fits in Bunnymund's arm with a perfection that borders on the uncanny.

“Right, so...” Jack mumbles. “Does this mean we're... _together_ , now?”

“No, I kissed you just for the bloody sake of it,” Bunnymund mutters, rolling his eyes even though Jack can't actually see. He receives a smack on his belly for that.

“So... yeah. Awesome.” 

They're quiet for a time, and there is truly no sound but their breathing at the wisps of snow outside, which probably only Bunnymund can hear anyway.

“I think it's letting up,” Jack murmurs. Bunnymund turns to the cave entrance and sees that the flakes have lessened. Give it another half-hour and they'll have stopped entirely.

“Good. Means we can bugger off.” He raises a paw and runs it through Jack's hair, scratching softly at where the hairline stops at the back of Jack's neck. Jack presses into it, almost purring.

“Can I come back to the Warren?” he asks, small and hopeful.

“'Course,” Bunnymund says. Jack hums happily, tucking his feet up until he's a little ball of winter sprite on Bunnymund's chest. Bunnymund, for his part, continues his scratching, the other arm holding Jack close, and he watches the ebbing snowfall with a smile on his face.


	6. Sex Pollen AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I hate the sex pollen trope.
> 
> Minor dubcon, I guess. If you don't like that stuff, don't read.

“'Warren Exploration Party'?”

Jack grins. “Come on, Cottontail, it'll be fun! This place is immense, and you haven't shown me half of it yet!” If he's hopping, it's not his fault. He loves being in the Warren, feeling the gentle pulse of it like it's Bunnymund's heartbeat, and he wants to see more of it. Also, he's still an excitable teenager, adventures are fun.

Bunnymund gives him a look that says he'd rather boil his head. “How about _no_?” He turns back to his pruning with a disgusted shake of his head. Jack pouts. Spoilsport.

“I could make it worth your while...” Jack suggests, sidling up and pressing himself to Bunnymund's side. Bunnymund's nose twitches.

“Jack, you're a hormonal little bastard, you wouldn't last five minutes without putting out,” he says easily.

Jack gasps in mock outrage. “ _Excuse_ me, I spent _three hundred and eighteen years_ not having sex!” He probably couldn't now. Winter, when he's working, and the run-up to Easter when Bunnymund is in full manic egg-painting overdrive are bad enough, and they're only a few months a year. Sex with Bunnymund is mind-blowing sex (and so what if he doesn't have anything to compare it to, nothing would compare anyway) and he doesn't want to have to forego it for stupid _pride_.

Bunnymund turns and gives him a look that says he knows perfectly well what Jack's thinking, and he heartily agrees. It's an 'I told you so' look and it annoys Jack to no end.

“Oh, come _on_ , Kangaroo, learn to have a little _fun_!”

Bunnymund sighs. Jack knows he's wavering, he can sense it, like a predator senses weakness in its prey.

“Why do you want to see the rest of the Warren anyway?” Bunnymund asks, slightly bewildered. Jack smiles, lopsided, a little embarrassed.

“All joking aside, it's because it's your home, Bunny. I like it here, I want to see more of it.” Also, down season. Bored out of his skull. But he's not going to tell Bunny that, because it's also not the main reason.

Bunnymund rubs his face. “You just come out with these things...” he mutters. “ _Fine_! We can go!”

Jack whoops, punching the air. It's easier to get his way with stubborn old Cottontail than other people would think, though that's probably only because he gets Boyfriend Privilege.

“Awesome!” Jack reaches up and kisses him on the side of his nose. “We could take a picnic.”

“We'll take a picnic,” Bunnymund agrees tonelessly, but Jack can tell by the fall of his ears that he's quite pleased by all of this.

.

“So, where are we headed?” Jack asks. He's carrying part of his picnic in a small leather backpack Sophie gave him. He likes it because it's roughly the same colour as Bunnymund vambraces and bandolier. Yes, he _is_ a sop, what of it?

“'Scalled the Valley,” Bunnymund says. He's carrying the other half and the blanket, but his pack is considerably different to Jack's, more Pookan, Jack supposes. Its detailing is intricate, and even though it's just a pack, it's a thing of beauty. “It's pretty close, but you've never been there.”

Jack doesn't really want to explore the Warren on his own. For all that it's his second home (nearly the first, by now), it seems disrespectful, and Jack wants Bunnymund to be there when he sees its wonders. He follows along behind Bunnymund, taking in the flora and insect life that populates the Warren. The butterflies are particularly exquisite, Jack could watch them for hours.

They're walking through a broad tunnel made of incredible flowers. There seems to be every hue and shape here, from honeysuckle to orchids. The green are rich and lustrous, the air sweet with a thousand glorious scents.

He starts when something iridescent darts into his face, hovers, then disappears. At first he thinks it's Baby Tooth, but then he sees it better.

“You have hummingbirds?” Jack asks in wonder. Bunnymund turns with a smile.

“Yep. Like 'em?”

“They're amazing...” he murmurs. He holds out a hand and the hummingbird alights, its movements little clockwork jerks. “How come they aren't in the main part of the Warren?”

“The plant life here's more tropical,” Bunnymund explains. The hummingbird comes to him and he offers his paw, smiling fondly. “They like it better.”

Soon the hummingbird speeds off again, and Jack watches it go, shimmering.

“So, any other wildlife I should know about?”

“Got more birds,” Bunnymund says. “Sparrows, robins, finches, budgies, tits... small things. Oh, and some moreporks. Don't know how the bloody hell _they_ got in, but they've hung around.”

“So you're something of an ornithologist, too?” Jack asks jokingly. Bunnymund grins.

“I'm connected to _all_ life on Earth, not just the plants, y'know.”

They pass from hummingbird-infested tunnels to a flat, grassy plain between two steep, rocky hillsides. A river, a sparkling silver ribbon, runs along in front of them, veering to the right and passing beneath a stony archway. The valley is carpeted with grass that's springy like a mattress and wildflowers. The trees are cherries, in perennial blossom, and weeping willows. The rocks on either side are thick with cushions of vivid moss. It's beautiful.

“Wow...” Jack breathes. “You really like holding out on people, don't you?”

Bunnymund chuckles. “I never visit these places very often. They get by on their own, really.” He crouches down and inspects a patch of strong, cheerful daisies. “Dump your bluey under that cherry.”

Jack does as he's told, which he assumes means 'drop your pack', then off he goes. Bunnymund's basically given his permission to let him run riot a little. Not that he ever would, this place is gorgeous. He does, however, use the river as a skating rink for a moment, just to make Bunnymund squawk.

It's very pretty, but not really that interesting. A snake is sunning itself on a rock and Jack watches it for a while, until it gets annoyed at the one-man audience and leaves with an indignant flick of its tail. Jack clambers back down and heads a little further upstream.

It's so tucked away he almost misses it.

“It” is a thin cleft in the rock, big enough for Bunnymund to squeeze through, and Jack, well... he'd probably be dead by now, if he were a cat. He follows the cleft, one hand on the cool stone, moisture dripping from the walls and freezing to tiny, pearlescent droplets under his touch, and emerges in a clearing.

Well, not exactly a _clearing_ , because this isn't a wood. More like a natural open space in the rock, like a small sinkhole. The dust motes are golden thick in their air, the sunlight buttery, and there, right in the middle, is the weirdest flower he's ever seen.

The Warren has never held anything dangerous before, so he doesn't hesitate to go up to it and study it close up.

Its petals fan out from its trumpet-like centre like a many-pointed star. There's something of a daffodil, something of an orchid and something of a lily in this thing, its bizarre. The leaves are shaped like crescents, which is weird too. Its colour is nothing Jack has ever seen in a flower before, the most vivid purple imaginable mottled with yellow.

Suddenly, the plant moves. Jack darts back, but then the trumpet is aiming at him and, with a rush, it sprays something in his face.

Jack yelps, trying to wipe it away, but it doesn't work. He feels it's only pollen, and feels a little less horrified, but still... it's sort of sticky and unpleasant. He opens his eyes and glares at the flower.

“Pervert,” he says. The flower does a good job of looking innocent, which it does by virtue of not actually having a face.

That, Jack supposes, is his cue to get the fuck out of there. He heads back down the cleft, complaining under his breath. He knows perfectly well it's his own fault for snooping, but he's not about to acknowledge it in the slightest. One has one's pride.

He washes his face in the river, and though he can't see his reflection, it feels like it's all gone, which is a relief. He can head back to Bunnymund and the Pooka will be none the wiser about his little escapade.

He's halfway back to the cherry tree when he begins to feel... strange. Hot under the collar, under his skin, in the pit of his stomach. He recognises the feeling, and he wonders what's brought it on. He hasn't even seen Bunnymund yet, and he highly doubts that this is a magical aphrodisiac river. His steps become steadily more uneven, his breath a little more shallow and the heat all that more intense. His thoughts wander constantly to Bunnymund, all the little things – and the very pleasantly _big_ things – that make him so damn desirable.

By the time he's back, he's hard and desperate, stumbling slightly.

Bunnymund, who is doodling in his sketchbook, raises his head when he arrives. Jack can't take it anymore. He throws himself at Bunnymund, bowling him over onto the soft grass, pressing his lips to a furry mouth. With furious intent he begins to thrust against Bunnymund's hard stomach, sifting his fingers through his fur and moaning weakly.

He's never needed it so much, and he's a hormonal perennial eighteen-year-old.

Bunnymund, unfortunately, has the strength and the willpower to push Jack away and give him a confused look. “What the bloody hell is going on, Ice Block?”

Jack shakes his head, panting, hips still thrusting like he can't fight it. He _can't_ , it's like a mad fog of lust has descended on his mind, clouding it from every rational thought that just might randomly come strolling by. He just knows he needs Bunnymund right _now_ , needs him with every atom in his body... And for the first time, he wants to top. The thought of tight, hot heat around him isn't something he's ever been particularly interested in before, but now... now that's the be-all and end-all of his desire.

Bunnymund gives him a shrewd, narrow-eyed look. He leans forward and sniffs, then groans. “You went near it, didn't you?”

Jack doesn't exactly give a fuck what he want near. His erection is starting to hurt now, the sole focus of him mind to be inside Bunnymund _right now_. He lunges, taking Bunnymund by surprise, but the Pooka's reflexes are too quick and Jack finds himself belly down on the ground, the full weight of a healthy, muscular adult Pooka pressing down on him. Normally, he'd find it incredibly arousing. Right now, it annoys him. He can't fuck Bunnymund like this!

He stops struggling when a familiar paw brings up his backside, reaches between his legs and begins to rub, just the heel, and it's sweet, sweet relief from the pressure, for now. The other paw is currently pressing him down to the sweet-smelling earth. It's so good Jack moans out loud, it diverts his mind from its single intent, but it's certainly not enough.

Bunnymund seems to sense it. He nuzzles at the back of Jack's head, shucks up his hoodie and nips at the pale skin, licking the red welts he leaves behind. Jack gives his moan to the ground, fingers tightening in the grass, gasping when he feels hardness against him. He _needs_ this, he needs this like he needs to breathe, fuck what he wanted before. This is the prelude to a familiar ecstasy, and he wants it so _badly_ he thinks he might break with it.

His pants are wrenched down to bunch at his bent knees, his cock free to leak onto the grass, the shock in the change of temperature making it twitch. Jack's not used to feeling this hot during sex, it's the strangest sensation, but he doesn't care.

Bunnymund appears to trust him to be good, because his paw leaves Jack's back and heads to his buttocks, holding him still and spreading them. Jack arches when he feels a wet tongue lick a strip down his crack, dedicating itself to his hole with a zealous intent that Bunnymund, the king of foreplay, has never quite displayed before. Jack doesn't mind, Jack doesn't care, he's too busy being lost in the sensations.

That tongue delves into him, working him loose, making him melt from the inside out. Jack shivers, thrusting back onto it, moaning and panting and he just wants to come, now, but he can't. It's still not enough.

He whimpers when Bunnymund's tongue leaves him, thrusting back into the air. Then warm fur is across his back again, a cold nose at the base of his neck and the tickle of whiskers, and Bunnymund drives home with a single, sure thrust that has Jack take him to the hilt.

Jack's cry echoes in the little valley as he arches back, full and loving it. Screw fucking Bunnymund, _this_ is what he wants, what he's always wanted, how could he wants anything else? Knowing just how malleable Jack is, how quickly he adjusts, Bunnymund begins to move with his usual steady power, rhythmic, perfect, mind-blowing, a counterpoint like a heartbeat. Jack trembles, pushing back, squeezing himself around Bunnymund's cock. Bunnymund's aim is true as always – surely there could be no one better at sex than him, no one, Jack thinks deliriously – and Jack's prostate is played mercilessly, driving him further down the inexorable path to completion.

Jack feels as if he's about to burst, his body a raw strip of nerve endings finely tuned to Bunnymund, but it is only when Bunnymund's paw finally reaches around and touches him that he comes. Just a stroke, barely a real touch, and he's shooting onto the grass with a cry that might be “Aster!” or might just be random, choked syllables. To be romantic, he thinks it's the first.

Jack goes boneless alarmingly fast, but it's not over yet, is it. Bunnymund hoists him up, leans back and holds him to his chest. His thrusts are still strong and regular, a perfect movement that makes Jack moan and shudder from the mingling of afterglow and over-sensitivity. It's just that little bit too much, pain lacing the pleasure, but then Bunnymund is coming, rigid and still, buried deep inside the winter sprite and biting hard on his shoulder, enough to make Jack cry out again. He likes the pain, though. It's an anchor as his mind clears and he risks being swept away with it. His body is cooling, relaxing, and whatever was driving him is leaving. He lets out a sigh of relief and collapses back against Bunnymund's chest, letting his head fall to a broad, furry shoulder. Bunnymund gently pulls out and settles down, holding Jack to him.

“Thank the Moon you didn't top,” Bunnymund says, huffing warm breath on to Jack's rapidly cooling skin. Jack half-turns – it's all he has the strength for – puzzled. He _had_ wanted to top, which was downright _weird_. He's never wanted to before. Somehow he's never cared for the idea.

“Why?” His voice sounds like gravel and breaking glass, and it feels like it, too. Bunnymund chuckles and points. Jack's eyes follow his gesture.

His semen, scattered on the grass, is not its normal pearly white colour. It's a sickening greeny-brown, and it makes Jack more than a little queasy to see it. “What the...?”

“There's seeds there,” Bunnymund explains. “If you'd topped, well... let's say they work like some kinds of insect larvae. Eat you from the inside out.”

There's a fungus that does that to bugs, Jack recalls. The implications of Bunnymund's words are downright _horrifying_ , and Jack does _not_ want these mental images. Not right now, not after sex. Not ever, in fact.

“Can we _not_ talk about this? I'd like to bask in the afterglow, thanks,” he says. Bunnymund snorts, and they lapse into silence. Bunnymund's fingers draw gentle circles around Jack's navel, and Jack finds the strength to card his fingers through the fur of Bunnymund's thigh. But there is a pressing question in Jack's mind, and it won't stop niggling.

“Why do you even _have_ that plant?” he asks. Bunnymund shrugs.

“I knew where it was,” he says. “And for ages the only one around here was me. Never saw the need to get rid of it.”

“Well... Get rid of it,” Jack orders. No more evil fungal parasite sex flowers for _him_ , thank you very much. Bunnymund gives him the sort of silence he gets when he's making a face, and Jack growls warningly. It's not exactly a _convincing_ growl, but it works on Bunnymund, usually.

“It's the last of its kind,” Bunnymund says plaintively.

“I don't care! It deserves to be extinct.”

Bunnymund sighs. “Fine. I'll get rid of it later.”

“How?” Jack asks warily.

“Burn it,” Bunnymund mumbles. Still holding Jack to him with one hand, he stretches. “To be honest, Ice Block, I've never seen it that colour before.”

“Huh?” Jack tries not to be suspicious about other semen Bunnymund might have seen infected by that plant. Or any other semen Bunnymund might have seen that wasn't his own, in general. Jack is not a jealous kind of guy, but... no, fuck that, he is _totally_ a jealous kind of guy.

“It's usually a much more vivid green,” the Pooka muses, gently starting to rub his chin on the top of Jack's head, like he always does after sex. “Actually... I think your natural, lower body temperature might have killed it.”

“Shit, really?” Jack perks up at that. Of course, it's a plant used to the balmy clime of the Warren, and Jack is a walking piece of ice. Well, not _literally_ , he's a little warmer than that, but where average human body temperature is 37 degrees Celsius, he's certainly hovering around the 27 degree point. Not frigid, but not naturally warm either, and he's certain he's colder inside. “I feel powerful, now,” he says, laughing. “Right so, what are we doing later?”

“Getting rid of the plant,” Bunnymund says.

“And I'm going to be there, so you can't just pretend to, mad scientist.”

Bunnymund makes an offended noise. “You don't _trust_ me?”

Jack manages to turn in Bunnymund's arms, wriggling out his pants and hoodie as he does, tossing the crumpled clothing to the side and revelling in the feel of soft, warm fur against every inch of his skin. It's always the most amazing of sensations.

“Of course I do,” Jack says, sincerely. He presses his lips to Bunnymund's, looping his arms lazily around Bunnymund's neck. “You know just what to do when an evil flower puts me under mind control.”

“Ah, 'bout that...” Bunnymund looks a little worried, his ears drooping slightly. “You're not... mad, right? I mean, you weren't exactly... consenting...”

Jack scoffs. “I give retroactive permission,” he says, snuggling into Bunnymund's embrace, rubbing his cheek against his soft white ruff. “Besides, there wasn't exactly a better way to deal with it. Don't feel guilty.”

Bunnymund breathes a sigh of relief and relaxes again.

“Besides,” Jack continues, “I was probably going to jump you later anyway.”


	7. Matching Soulmate Markings

The world had always been in black and white for Jack Frost.

He'd long since grown used to it – his season was winter, and winter was mostly white anyway. He didn't think there could be soulmate for someone who couldn't even be seen, or heard, or touched. He would never know what green and red and blue were, never see beyond the shades of grey. He'd gotten over it by now.

It was easier to just accept that the world was monochrome for everyone, and that he wasn't the anomaly.

And then, on the 14th of April 1968, everything changed.

It hadn't been his fault. Well, technically it had, but... he couldn't help it. There was only so long you could bottle everything up.

He was gazing upon a vast stretch of white. It covered everything, splashed against the grey trees like angry paint, thick, soft and deep as his ankles. This was not supposed to happen.

He had only a moment to take it in before he was slammed against a tree trunk, pain shooting up his spine like electric fire. He shut his eyes, cringing at it.

“What the _bloody hell_ are you _playing_ at?!”

Jack opened his eyes, gasping, and stared. There was something... odd about the face in front of him. He was staring into large, furious eyes and they... they were bright and incredible. They stole his breath away, because they were not a shade of grey.

They were brilliant, a vivid hue Jack had no name for. It was _colour_. It was something beautiful, incredible, something he'd never seen before and something he'd never expected to see. As he stared, colour began to leak from those glorious eyes, seeping into the world around him. At first pale pastels, bleached by non-existence, then deeper, brighter, dizzying.

He took a shuddering breath. He saw now that the eyes in front of him were the same at the leaves visible through the blanket of unseasonal snow, which meant they were green. And such a green! Magnificent, the kind of green poets would decant odes to, the kind of green that sang of Spring. Once he'd committed that colour to memory, he finally looked at the face.

He reeled internally from shock.

He was staring at a _rabbit_. A giant, bipedal _rabbit_. His jaw dropped. This couldn't be right, could it? There must be some mistake!

His soulmate couldn't be a _rabbit_.

“I asked you a _question_!” snarled the rabbit, and his grip on the collar of Jack's hoodie tightened, almost choking him. Well, if he _was_ his soulmate, Jack mused, this wasn't the best way to start the whole thing.

“I... I...” Jack babbled. Then he swallowed, forcing a grin. The truth couldn't be revealed to someone who was practically a stranger. “Who's asking?”

The rabbit looked taken aback, the sort of expression one wore when one wondered what the fuck the other was on. “Who's ask-? _Excuse_ me?” The rabbit let go of him, let him slump to the ground in disgust. “The Easter Bunny, you little fucker!”

Well, it made sense, Jack supposed. Not many people a giant rabbit could actually be, after all. He rubbed his throat, chuckling.

“Whoops?” he said, as unapologetically as he could. The Easter Bunny was so angry he probably hadn't noticed the flurry of emotions Jack had just been through. It was easier to hide the fragility and the shock under a layer of cockiness.

The Easter Bunny snarled again, and Jack found himself backed back against the tree again, a deceptively sharp wooden dagger at his throat.

“If you _ever_ pull a stunt like this again...” he warned. “Easter! _Ruined_ because of _you_ , you little _bastard_!” The Easter Bunny let him go with a look of absolute disgust, and Jack took that as the cue to leave, and quickly. He called up the Wind, and was gone by the time the Easter Bunny had time to turn around.

“See you next time, Cottontail! Jack Frost says TTFN!” he called back to the loud swearing being thrown at his fleeing back. Once he was out of earshot, he let himself deflate, the fake cockiness melting away into complete and utter shock. The Wind dropped him delicately on a tree branch, scattering the snow. Beneath it, in torn patches, the bark was a muddy, wet brown, glistening. He stared at it. He stared at his hoodie – it was blue, he realised, a deep, rich blue – his pants, his staff, the sky above, the leaves around, the ground below.

He was seeing colour for the first time in his life, and he didn't know whether to whoop and cheer or burst into tears.

The knowledge that the world was finally also brought its own batch of problems. He'd begun to see hues with the rich green of the Easter Bunny's eyes. It was common knowledge that that was how you knew you were seeing your soulmate. It meant that that loud, grumpy, self-important, Easter-obsessed _giant rabbit_ was supposed to be the one he would fall in love and spend the rest of his life with.

He was now torn between laughing and cursing. Destiny had the worst sense of humour. A giant rabbit, of all things! How could he even be attracted to someone who had just threatened him with a wooden dagger, anyway? And did he mention giant fucking rabbit?

No, this _wasn't_ happening, not now, not any time soon. His musings turned to a sulk, and he remained in the tree for the rest of the day, forgoing fun and joy in favour of feeling sorry for himself.

.

Everyone was born with it. It was etched onto yourself, across you, a mark of possession made loud and clear to the world. It was your first word, carefully taught by parents or carers, and once you learnt to read you never forgot it, because you saw it in the mirror every time. There was no way you could forget the name you were born with, not when the person with that name was your soulmate, and their name was your markings.

Most were born with Pookan names. Some were born with other names of races on other planets, Tuatha or Fomorians or Noctilucians. It made finding them harder, but there was some sort of office set up to deal with it, through a census, or something.

Aster... Aster had been unlucky.

His name had been, of all things, “Jack Frost”.

It was not a Pookan name. No Pooka had ever been called Jack Frost, nor would there ever be one. It didn't mean anything – in fact, it sounded much like someone choking on something. The galactic census did nothing to help, given Jack Frost wasn't a name given by any other culture, even in jest. His mother wept for him, and his father would pat him on the shoulder with a consoling smile, but Aster refused to resign himself to a life of exile.

Some Pooka were born without names. Some Pooka didn't fall in love with the bearer of their name, and thus never bonded. Some Pooka's bound ones died, and therefore the name written on them was a lasting, painful memory, but it could be ignored. There were still plenty of fish in the sea. It wasn't impossible, just harder. Of course, Aster just had to go and fall for his best friend, didn't he?

Satinash was brave, fierce and optimistic. She fought with the grace and power of a master, she laughed at little things and enjoyed singing. Her temper was fiery and impulsive, and whenever they sparred Aster felt alive in a way he never had before.

Her markings – stark black on snowy white – were a name, like everyone else's. She told him once that she'd met the Pooka who bore it, and she'd found her simply unbearable, so they hadn't pursued anything further.

“She wrinkled her nose at me when I said I was a warrior! How could I ever live with someone like _that_?”

This was perfect. Another golden opportunity such as this, he was sure, would never arise again. He resolved to tell her. Each day, the confession made itself halfway from his mouth before his throat closed, his mind went blank and he couldn't speak anymore.

And then, Pitch had come, and he was the last of them all.

Earth had been very different. It had also been the first time he'd ever encountered humans called “Jack”. With a cold, creeping horror, like ice down his spine, he realised his soulmate must be human. Short-lived, as ugly as Aster had once found the Fomorians and Tuatha, somewhat dull-witted... it was a horrifying idea. Then he'd died and come back, of course. He'd been much more sympathetic, afterwards, belonging to Earth and its life as he now did.

And now this.

This little figjam waltzing around, ruining Easter for everyone! Covering the land with snow, hiding his eggs from view... if his belief dipped because of this little, white-haired larrikin, Moon help him he wouldn't be held accountable for his actions. He slammed the kid against a tree, overly violent in his rage, and glared right in the brat's eyes.

What he'd seen there, in that icy, haunting blue that made Bunnymund want to paint it, had made him confused. The expression on that pointed, pale face hadn't been one of anger, or shock, or even cruel glee at a prank well-executed. It had been a strange sort of... recognition.

He hadn't liked it. And he hadn't liked what had come after, either.

“See you next time, Cottontail! Jack Frost says goodbye!”

He'd been struck dumb. He'd frozen in the snow, fist stopped halfway though an angry shake. Jack Frost? _That_ was _Jack Frost_?

The name all over his body belonged to that... that... _yobbo_? It couldn't be right.

Bunnymund gave up Easter here as a bad job. He went west, trying not to think about the mad kid, focusing on eggs and baskets.

_Of course_ Fate had a nasty way of drawing people together in a way they often didn't want. _Of course_ Jack Frost had to be chosen as a Guardian. _Of course_ everyone would be apples with it except himself. _Of course_ he had to look like the unreasonable one in this situation. He liked his friends, but Toothiana was half-blinded by her ridiculous – and frankly incomprehensible – crush, Sandy liked everyone regardless of past deeds and North... North was probably just doing it to piss him off. He ground his teeth as quietly as he could at how _stupid_ everyone was being.

“Jack Frost is a lot of things, but a Guardian _isn't_ one of them!” he said angrily. Everyone ignored him.

Bunnymund could taste the deceit even as he uttered it. Not a lie – he truly believed that, and who could blame him? – but there was only half the truth in his reasoning. The whole truth, fickle as it was, was that Bunnymund did not want to even meet the person whose name was scrawled all over his body like a neon sign proclaiming _PROPERTY OF JACK FROST_. He didn't want to have to deal with that unfairness, not now, not on top of everything else. In fact, he didn't want to have to ever deal with it. This was the Universe's way of kicking a bloke when he was down. Again.

Sometimes it was hard to be Hope when you had so little of your own to spare.

Nonetheless, despite his justifiable protests, they'd retrieved the little yobbo – and _of course_ they'd sent Bunnymund himself to fetch him. The little snot had had the gall to look happy to see him. Though, as it turned out... it could have been worse. Much worse.

Heading back to North's, adrenaline wearing off now his life and everyone else's wasn't in any danger, made him realise how bone-achingly tired he actually was. Jack was sitting beside him, a little further back, uncharacteristically quiet, and Bunnymund almost imagined he could feel the fur where his markings were bristling at the vicinity. In a good way, not in an annoyed way.

Jack wasn't as bad as he'd thought. Jack was caring, he worked hard to fix his mistakes, he had a way with kids and a knack for making everything seem, well, fun. He'd made Jamie Bennett believe in him. Not Toothiana, not North or Sandy, not even _himself_ , but in _him_ , E. Aster Bunnymund.

It was the strangest sensation, to have forty-four years of prejudice dismantled in a few short days, but it wasn't unpleasant, in this case, to know he was wrong. His markings didn't feel like an outlet for the Universe's warped sense of humour anymore. He'd ground his teeth in irritation when Toothiana had hugged the kid. Sandy had heard him and turned with a quizzical look. Bunnymund had ignored him, trying for the general aloofness of his pre-regeneration existence. The Sandman, of course, couldn't be fooled, and he'd merely given the Pooka a looked of smirking, narrow-eyed shrewdness, the kind that made Bunnymund squirm because it said, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Sandy knew _everything_.

Now here, in the Sleigh, almost at the Pole, Bunnymund wondered where to go. There were so many variables, each as nerve-wracking as the last (could this ever be reciprocal? Did Jack even like other blokes? Could he even like Bunnymund despite the fur and ears and sheer age?). He wanted to open his mouth and say something, anything, even something completely and utterly stupid.

Luckily, he didn't have to.

.

Never, not even in his wildest dreams, would Jack have imagined working with the Easter Bunny.

Over the years, he'd come to terms with the fact his soulmate was apparently a six foot one anthropomorphic leporid. It had been hard, at first, and very, very weird, but with endless, patient hours of observation, he'd come to the conclusion that few could be as perfect as Bunny, nor even as hot.

He was tall, broad-shouldered and with enough compact, lissom muscle to out half the Hollywood hunks to shame. He moved with the sure, steady grace and power of someone confident and comfortable in their own body, something Jack both admired and envied immensely. Forever stuck in the coltish limbo between gangly adolescence and actual manhood, he found himself wondering whether he could ever be seen as viable option for companionship (he preferred to ignore the supreme fuck-up that had been Easter Sunday of 1968 – the less that was remembered, the better). He caught himself wondering what that fur would feel like on his skin. If it was anything like rabbit fur, it would be glorious. He found himself admiring – from afar, always from afar – Bunny's movements, his surety, his ears and his tail.

Easter became the time of year he most looked forward to. It was when Bunny above ground the most, and easily trackable. He was a creature of habit, the Easter Bunny, heading round the world with the sun and the time zones, easily followed. Jack would perch on a tree, not too far away, and watch. He'd study, with burning intensity, the movements and mannerisms of the one who'd given him the chance to see colour.

Once, early on, he'd caught Bunny doing katas in the Chinese mountains. He'd had a raging boner after that, and it had been _extremely_ awkward.

Now, however, he was sitting not even a foot away from the object of his desire, and he longed to say something. Bunnymund looked tired, and he leaned back against the polished wood, eyes closed, but not asleep.

“You ok, Bunny?” he asked, voice low. He knew Bunnymund would hear him easily, and he didn't really want any of the others in the conversation. Bunnymund's nose twitched.

“Yeah... feel stuffed, though,” he replied. He yawned, giving Jack a slightly apologetic look. Jack offered a grin in reply.

“What're you gonna do now?” he dared to ask.

“Go home and sleep, prolly,” Bunnymund grumbled. “Feel as if I could sleep for a couple of millennia.”

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, me too.”

They fell into a vaguely companionable silence. Both Sandy and Toothiana were dozing, the Tooth Fairy's head tipped back and her mouth open as she snored gently. North held the reins only loosely, humming to himself quietly. They had to go the long way, it seemed: North was out of snow globes.

“So... got a place, then?” Bunnymund asked. Jack stared. He hadn't expected Bunnymund to actually initiate a conversation. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts and process the question.

“Um... usually I just... sleep in a tree,” he admitted. He didn't quite know why he was going back to the Pole considering home was ostensibly Burgess, but... it made sense. Sort of. It gave the kids closure, for one thing. To his surprise, Bunnymund turned and stared.

“No,” he said firmly. “You can come and kip at the Warren.” He cleared his throat. “Unless, that is, you, er, wanna stay at the Pole...”

Jack's heart almost leapt from his chest. Bunnymund had invited him to the Warren. To spend the night (completely platonically, ok, but Jack would eagerly devour whatever scraps were dropped from the table). He clutched his staff, swallowed, and gathered up enough of his cheek to turn it into some form of courage. “Ok. I, uh... thank you. I'd like that. Thank you, Bunny.”

Bunnymund smiled at him. Jack thought his heart might explode.

.

Sleeping once at the Warren soon turned into more than once, which turned into freqeunt visits. Bunnymund would invite Jack back whenever there was a monthly Guardian meeting at the North Pole, and Jack would gleefully accept. He gained his own little burrow – though he would rather have shared Bunnymund's – and he felt he was making himself useful, somehow. Bunnymund, for his part, liked the company. He hadn't realised how monotonous his life had become until Jack had arrived to stir it up.

Neither knew then, of course, that they were actually mutual soulmates. Bunnymund had no idea how humans worked, and neither did Jack regarding Pooka. For the moment, they got to know each other, destiny be damned, basking in the time spent together, though each felt somewhat like a thief. It was plain to any who looked they were in love.

.

Bunnymund was shelling peas. Jack was supposed to be helping, but he was really just eating them – after all, there was nothing quite as delicious as freshly-shelled raw peas. He grabbed a handful, ignoring Bunnymund's glare, and popped a couple in his mouth as if they were candy.

“So,” he began, through the peas. “Do Pooka have soulmates?” He'd told himself a thousand times that this would be the day he asked, but he'd never managed to. Now, however, with the atmosphere so relaxed, the question just found its own way out, sneaky thing. Maybe he should lay off the peas.

Bunnymund paused in his work, but he didn't look at Jack. “You, er... humans have soulmates too, then?”

Jack managed not to flush and snorted. “Yeah, of course we do. Well... Not sure about Tooth. I don't know what she is. She told me she wasn't an alien like you and Sandy.”

“Tooth's only half human,” Bunnymund explained. “Apparently, Sisters of Flight have heartsongs, but none of them had ever heard one until Rashmi met Haroom.”

“So she has song instead of colour?” Jack asked, trying not to wonder how Bunnymund knew about Toothiana's way of finding a soulmate. This time, Bunnymund did look up.

“Colour?”

Jack cleared his throat, and he couldn't keep the frost from his cheeks this time. “Uh, yeah... you're born seeing in black and white, and when you, um, look into your soulmate's eyes, then you start seeing colour. Their eye colour is the first colour you ever see. And when they die... the world turns black and white again.”

To Jack's surprise, Bunnymund stared at him in abject horror. Perhaps the artist couldn't conceive a world without colour. “That's fucked up, mate.”

Jack scowled. “That's just how it is. So... how do Pooka find their soulmates?”

“Our markings,” Bunnymund said, pointing to his shoulder, the one facing Jack. “We've got their name scrawled all over us in Pookan. We find.... _used to_ find them through a census. Course, if you didn't like 'em, you didn't have to stay with them.”

“That's good,” Jack said. “I'm sorry, though, Bunny...” He dared to reach out a hand, tentatively, to touch Bunnymund's shoulder. He took care not to go deeper than the fur, but it truly was as soft as he'd imagined.

“Sorry for what?” Bunnymund asked, bewildered. Jack tore his hand away, and it seemed to take such an extraordinary effort to do so.

“For...” He waved a hand. Bunnymund looked at him, eyebrows drawn low in confusion. “I mean... there aren't any Pooka left, are there?”

Bunnymund shook his head, with a small huff that might have been a laugh. “I used to think, aeons ago, that I was unlucky. My name wasn't Pookan. It didn't belong to Manny's race, or Pitch's, or Sandy's, or anyone else's. It was like being branded with a joke. It wasn't until I came to Earth that I realised... the name was human.”

Jack stayed perfectly still and said nothing. The surge of jealousy that bubbled through him was so powerful he could barely contain it. If he didn't keep it tightly leashed, a blizzard in the Warren was inevitable. He choked it down, but his mind still whirred with questions: who was this person? Who _dared_ to be on Bunnymund's body instead of him?

“So... w-what does it say?” Jack asked, unable to fight his masochistic curiosity.

Bunnymund didn't look at him. Jack thought his heart might break.

“Tell me, Ice Block,” Bunnymund said, “can you see colour?”

Jack frowned. He could lie. He'd _have_ to lie, it would be easy to. Then Bunnymund looked at him, those eyes met his, the first colour he'd ever seen and... they seemed to be drawing the truth from him. He couldn't lie to those eyes, could he?

He swallowed. “Yes. Yes, I can.”

Bunnymund took a deep breath. “And what... what colour were those eyes?”

Jack's insides turned to ice. Did Bunnymund _know_? How could he know, he'd never told _anyone_... Before he'd had no one to tell, and now, well... it was _Bunnymund_ , wasn't it? How would his new friends react to that? Would they shun him, hate him, think him strange or wrong? As brave, loyal, wise and simply amazing Bunnymund was, if he knew and didn't like it... Jack didn't know what he would do.

He licked his lips. He could say any colour, there were enough of them: blue, brown, black, grey, even purple like Toothiana's... and people had green eyes. There were _loads_ of people with green eyes... but not a green like Bunnymund's green. “They were... they were green. Such a bright, vivid green, like... spring.”

Bunnymund turned to him, but it was Jack's turn to not be able to look. He stared at the bowl of peas (brown wood, green peas, and he knew that thanks to Bunnymund), trying to force himself to keep calm, to sit there like an adult and not bolt like a spooked deer. 

“Jack, do you want to know whose name my markings are?”

Jack forced himself to nod, though his head felt like a ton weight.

“When I found out who it was, I was furious. It had to be yet another cruel joke, Destiny taking the piss. I had all the bad luck, didn't I? A name no one had ever heard of, and then the name ended up belonging to the world's biggest drongo, someone I truly didn't like at all, couldn't stand the sight of.” Bunnymund sighed. “Then I got to know them. I learnt they were far better than I'd given them credit for. They were brave, determined, very funny...”

Jack wanted to clap his hands over his ears. He didn't want to hear about this person. He didn't want to know they existed. It wasn't fair, was it? It just wasn't _fair_.

“And they'd been alone for so long,” Bunnymund continued, each word a stab to Jack's chest. “It was my turn to feel like the world's biggest drongo. I mean, how was I to know, on Easter Sunday of 1968, that the one who ruined Easter would be the one whose name I was marked with, and that I'd fall in love with?”

Jack's head shot up, eyes wide, mouth agape. “You're kidding, right?” he practically squeaked, wincing at the pitch. Bunnymund laughed.

“Nope, not kidding.” He reached out a paw, gently touched Jack's cheek. “I wouldn't joke about this.”

Jack swallowed again, hardly daring to breath. This was unreal. This was impossible. This was... this was _perfect_.

“They were your eyes!” he blurted. “I saw... it was your eyes.”

Bunnymund smiled, and Jack felt a little faint. Life wasn't supposed to be this easy, it wasn't supposed to slot together so perfectly. You weren't supposed to have all the jigsaw pieces that fitted together properly, but... aw, fuck, gift horses and things like that.

He reached forward and pulled himself against Bunnymund, pressing their mouths together. It was awkward, it didn't quite work, but at that moment, he didn't really care. It was enough for this to have happened, really truly have happened. It was enough that Bunnymund's paws were holding him close, holding him together. He drove his fingers into the fur on Bunnymund's shoulders, possessive, and Bunnymund hummed into the kiss.

When they pulled apart, Jack grinned dopily.

“Wow... I never thought that would happen,” he said.

“No?” Bunnymund asked lightly. He pulled Jack closer still, fitted him against his chest, chin on his head. It was warm and comfortable and Jack didn't ever want to move again.

“Nope. I mean... it had been 256 years. No one could see me, no one could hear me... Perhaps I didn't even have a soulmate. Then I saw you, and... Wow. Colour just exploded and it was amazing.”

Bunnymund chuckled. “You were considerably better disposed to it than I was.”

Jack scoffed. “Yeah, because finding out your soulmate is a giant bunny isn't weird at all. But, hey... I'm happy now.” He ran a hand along Bunnymund's forearm, tracing the shapes of his vambrace. “When you were tiny, the colour... it turned muted, it started fading. It was terrifying. I thought...” He gulped down the horror that had struck him then, the fear that something was wrong, how the world became bleached around him. “I thought you were dying.”

Bunnymund's answer was to hold him tighter, fierce and protective. It made Jack sigh happily.

“Well, I'm not going anywhere now, I swear,” the Pooka said vehemently.

“That's good,” Jack mumbled, tucking his legs up, burrowing as close as he could. “I'm glad you... you changed your mind. About me.”

“Believe me, I'm glad too,” Bunnymund replied. Jack reached up, carded his fingers through Bunnymund's fur again.

“So... you've been walking around your whole life with my name all over you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Bunnymund admitted with a snort. Jack grinned.

“'Property of Jack Frost',” he murmured. He liked the sound of that.

.

“So, Tooth... Bunny tells me you have a heartsong?”

They'd taken it more than well, their relationship, Jack couldn't have asked for anything better. You didn't question soulmates, after all. Toothiana sighed.

“Yes, I do, but it's a very confusing one,” she said. “I hear it, sometimes, and it's like... Christmas carols mixed with Russian folk music. I don't get who it could be at _all_...”

Jack stared at her. Was she joking, or...? Nope, she was serious. “Um, Tooth...”

“Hm?”

He tilted his head pointedly towards North, who was laughing uproariously at something Sandy had illustrated with his dreamsand. Bunnymund, next to him, was shaking his head wearily, but he wore a smile nonetheless. Jack had to draw himself back into the moment. It was easy to get distracted when looking at Bunnymund. Toothiana, however, merely looked confused.

He groaned softly, then turned. “Hey, North! Sing something!” he yelled. All three of the others looked at him strangely, but then Bunnymund's face lit with understanding. He chuckled behind his paw.

“What are you wanting me to sing, Jack?” North asked, confused. Jack shrugged.

“Any old thing! A Russian folk song, perhaps?”

Toothiana blinked. North clapped his hands and rubbed them together, a broad smile on his face.

“Now this is song about young girl and her Vanya...”

And he burst into song. Toothiana gasped like she'd been doused with cold water, and Jack saw that as a cue to slip over to Bunnymund.

“You little galah,” he said affectionately, nuzzling the side of his head. Jack shrugged again with a broad grin.

“Hey, I like to help my friends,” he said. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Now... do stars have soulmates?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers, I do urge you to try freshly-shelled peas at least once in your lives. They are the most delicious thing you will ever taste, and I could eat buckets of them.


	8. Meet in a Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I'm having trouble actually writing anything lately, I'm feeling like absolute shit tonight and I doubt I'll have the original prompt for #8 ready anytime soon, you can all have this, which I have had written for months now and particularly like. It's very enjoyable to write from Sandy's PoV, he's adorable, and there's nothing but internal monologue.

Sanderson Mansnoozie prides himself on knowing all about dreams. He is, rightly, an expert. He can tell you about fever dreams and nightmares, bizarre dreams and adventure dreams, stress dreams and prophetic dreams.

And love dreams.

Though Sanderson deals mostly with the children of the world and their simple wishes and desires, he sometimes delves into the minds of his friends and fellow Guardians. They lead busy lives, stressful lives, sometimes dangerous lives, and every now and again they might need a balm to counteract what the mind needs the night to deal with. There are things in their pasts and presents that aren't the most pleasant. North has his past as a thief, Toothiana the loss of her parents, and Bunnymund... Bunnymund has the greatest pain of all. He deals with it well, but sometimes, on dark nights when Sanderson can feel Pitch prowling at the edge of his perception, the nightmares come out to play. On those nights Bunnymund's mind teems with the excruciating memories of his people, their massacre at the hands of shadows, the terrible weight of being the last.

It's on those nights that Sanderson hovers above the great island continent and allows the tendrils of his dreams to find their way to Bunnymund's mind, replacing the pain with other things: verdant life, eggs, new colours that he knows Bunnymund will go mad trying to recreate (though he always manages)... but lately, something else has been creeping to the surface.

Sanderson can sense people's deepest wishes when his dreamsand touches their minds. He was once a wishing star, to him it is second nature, and he can sense something painful that he has not felt for millennia within Bunnymund.

The Guardian of Hope is lonely.

Sanderson worries deeply about this for quite some time. He is always distracted in his work, so it does not affect it, but he has no solution to his friend's predicament.

It is only after Pitch is banished again, for the moment, that the solution presents itself.

Jack Frost is another of his friends in profound, desperate need of good dreams. Since rediscovering his past, his sleeping mind has been haunted by his sister, bristling with the swords of what ifs. It pains Sanderson to see them, and so he helps as best he can, with fresh snow fall and playtimes. He sends dreams of his new believers and his new family, good times with his sister, and they help. But Sanderson can sense it, beneath everything, bone-deep and weary in its constance.

The Guardian of Fun is lonely as well.

Sanderson is not a lonely creature. He hung in the heavens once, and there is no place as lonely as space, but that is where stars belong and so he had never felt it. Toothiana has her fairies, North his yetis and elves, and thus they are not lonely either.

To him, the solution seems obvious.

Being silent, as stars often are, Sanderson is very good at watching. He watches them at these new habitual meetings. He sees how Jack teases Bunnymund and how Bunnymund rises to the challenge again and again, how they trade banter, back and forth, quick as lightning. But he also sees how they are when the other isn't looking. He sees Jack's gaze to Bunnymund's back turn to fascination, and how Bunnymund glances one too many times to be entirely coincidence. He does not look to North, Toothiana or himself, Sanderson, as often.

It's simple, isn't it.

Sanderson is not that good at love dreams, though no one knows more than him. They are simply not his usual field, no, that is the dreams of children, adventures and desires, and dealing with love dreams is something he is not well-versed in. The theory yes, but not the practice, but he will try. His friends need it.

He knows both Bunnymund and Jack well enough that any dream of them will be perfect. It's a gift, he supposes, this photographic memory, and it is put to good use in the execution of his work. For dreams like this, a perfect likeness is necessary, otherwise the dreamer might find themselves with higher expectations than is wise. Bunnymund and Jack's expectations one of the other are pitifully low, however, with the past bad blood between them, and this needs to be worked on. They have so much to offer each other, and yet neither quite knows it yet.

Sanderson takes it also a personal challenge. It isn't often that he gets to use his powers so fully, and he welcomes it.

He starts with Bunnymund, where the path will be more arduous. Bunnymund has no patience for Jack, none at all, and though he may look, he does not yet understand why he looks. It is down to Sanderson to fix that.

It is a night of restless tossing and turning that he chooses, a night when Bunnymund needs to be soothed into a peaceful slumber. The sight of Bunnymund twitching in his sleep tugs at Sanderson's heart, and so he sets to work. He weaves a pretty dream, a lovely dream, a dream of a flashing white grin and icy eyes, hair like snow and light-quick movements. He weaves a dream of frost ferns and angelic flurries, the pretty kind that even Bunnymund cannot deny are beautiful. He weaves branches painted with frost and hung with prism-like icicles, and beneath that a boy, a boy with a contagious laugh and a taste for Fun.

Once he has laid the foundations, the dream will build itself. It will go where it wishes, though it will follow the trail Sanderson has set for it. He wishes he could be there when Bunnymund awakens, to see his reaction, but he has other people to visit this night, to bring dreams of football and flying, cakes and kittens, and so he leaves, heading west, chasing the setting sun.

It is once he reaches North America that he visits Jack. Tonight the poor lad is also restless, curled up under an overhang on a bed of snow, clutching his staff. There is pain on his face, and it is all Sanderson can do to not croon and caress Jack's brow, brushing away the creases. Instead, he works on battling the darkness inside Jack's mind.

He blows away the thin ice and freezing water like a maid sweeps away cobwebs, and brings to the fore a far more pleasant dream. This one is a dream spun of verdant foliage and the fresh green of spring. It is made of vivid colours on smooth eggshells, slate grey, silky fur, broad shoulders and long ears. Here a twitch of a nose, there the thump of a great foot, the thrill of a chase, the calm of a sweet afternoon and the fresh feeling of Hope, all that Jack could have and more.

Once again, he cannot remain to see the outcome of this first dream, but he can guess. Jack knows, for all his complaints, that Bunnymund is a good person, strong, loyal and brave for all his grumpiness and stuffiness, and therefore will be far more susceptible to these dreams than Bunnymund. He will need less convincing, of this Sanderson is sure.

Sanderson continues in this vein for some time. He studies their behaviour at their meetings, and he can see the difference. Bunnymund's glances last longer, are far more frequent now. Jack's have changed from curious to longing, with a bitten lip and a delicate brushing of frost to his cheeks. Sanderson tries not to crow victory yet. It is not until they are together that he will privately celebrate his triumph.

He is surprised when one night, Jack's dream goes its own way entirely, wrenching itself loose of Sanderson's grasp and careering down its own tracks. Sanderson retreats to his work quite rapidly after that, giggling silently. It is not his business when Jack's youthful mind reminds its owner that though his age may be three hundred and eighteen, his body is still quite that of an adolescent.

And Bunnymund does insist on going around naked, after all.

Eventually, he sees the change in their body language. He sees it in the way they stand near each other, the change in their tone of voice when one addresses the other. There is no more hostility, no more rehashing the past. Sanderson smiles. They are close to it, to all he has planned. He cracks his knuckles and pushes for the final stretch.

Jack's subconscious has already caught on commendably, working on its own with singular enthusiasm – though mostly of a sexual nature, Jack is but a boy, after all – and Sanderson need not oversee the winter sprite's slumber anymore. Instead he focuses on Bunnymund. His friend's mind is ancient, so very set in its ways it has been a great effort to convince it that this thing is right. It still sometimes likes to brings up old grudges, one ruined Easter enough to keep it on a loop. Sanderson coaxes it to the right idea eventually, like a spooked rabbit (how apt), and now he need only convince it of one thing.

How perfect its owner and Jack would be together.

He spins dreams of chases and sweet summer afternoons in the Warren. He plays kisses and embraces like a symphony, affection and warmth and companionship and loyalty and everything Bunnymund has needed for so long into one, beautiful dreamscape. There is fun, there is love, there is friendship, there is good-natured rivalry. Sanderson knows it will be enough.

When next he sees them, there is something even more different than before. They move closer to each other, share brushing touches and private looks when they think no one is looking. Sanderson smiles. It has been a job well done.


	9. Mistletoe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals. Sorry it's late. I hope you had an excellent day and loads of prezzies!

The Monthly Guardians' Meeting – which in Jack's head had the capitals to bestow it the correct amount of gravitas North was so fond of giving it – was something North had organised every third Sunday of any month, unless it coincided with Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday. So far it hadn't, which Jack wasn't sure was good or bad, because they rarely had anything truly important to declare. It had mostly become an excuse for food, talking and occasionally, in everyone else's case, booze.

Today, however, was different. North had the sort of look he had when he was trying to contain himself, best defined as constipated excitement. That meant something was afoot, though Jack had no idea what, exactly.

He nodded to Bunnymund as the Pooka appeared. Bunnymund nodded back with something like a friendly smile, and Jack couldn't help but grin. Stupidly.

Damn _crush_. It had been like this for weeks, ever since Jack had actually realised that the tightening in his chest wasn't the onset of a heart attack, or the fluttering in his stomach wasn't indigestion.. He wondered when he would be over it, but it didn't seem to be happening any time soon. Bunnymund was just too... too... too _whatever_ he was. _Guh_.

“Right, we are all here, yes?” North asked, clapping his hands and rubbing them together gleefully. Bunnymund rolled his eyes.

“You can _see_ we're all here,” he said exasperatedly, folding his arms. “So, what's so exciting that it looks like you're going to wet yourself?”

North gave him a withering look. He wasn't very good at them, really. “Drumroll, please!”

Jack winced. On cue, a couple of elves marched in with their little drums and did North's bidding. Next to him, Bunnymund hissed in irritation, his ears folding back against his skull. Once the elves had finished, North laughed a great booming laugh.

“It is time for Guardians' Ball!”

There was a groan from Bunnymund, a very loud and dramatic one as the Pooka pressed his paws to his face. Toothiana's expression was like the fake enthusiasm of someone who'd just drunk some curdled milk. Sandy merely sighed and stared at the table. These were obviously not the reactions North had been expecting, because he huffed in annoyance.

“Um... What's a Guardians' Ball?” Jack asked, feeling decidedly out of the loop. North opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again. He looked thoughtful.

“It is,” he began, slowly, as if every word carried its own weight of great dignity, “event that happens every one hundred and eight years.”

He paused, probably for effect. The effect wasn't the one he wanted, because Jack was still simply confused. Toothiana sighed sharply.

“It's an actual ball,” she explained, cutting North off before he could say another word. “Formal attire, music, every denizen of the spirit world invi...ted...” She trailed off and winced.

“ _Nearly_ every,” Bunnymund said gravely. He placed a paw on Jack's shoulder, and Jack felt torn between shrugging it off and leaning into the touch.

Of course he'd never known about it. He'd never been invited, had he? He'd never deserved an invitation then. No one had ever cared enough before. The thought brought a sour taste to his mouth even though, in all fairness, this was completely and utterly something he would never have enjoyed in the slightest. He gave himself a mental slap. There was no point being disappointed about something he wouldn't have found fun, but... it still stung, no matter how much he tried to rationalise it.

“To... to be fair,” Toothiana ventured, “there are other spirits we never invited, or ones we invited and they never came.”

“Mother Nature never shows up,” Bunnymund said. “It's not much of a consolation, mate, I know, but... We're sorry.”

Jack took a deep breath and hitched on a weak smile. “Different times, huh? And, hey, I get an invite now, right?”

North chuckled and walked over just to ruffle his hair. “As guest of honour!” he announced. Jack laughed along with him.

“So, um... when is it?” Jack asked.

“It's usually near Christmas,” Toothiana said. “Winter solstice, a lot of spirits are free around that time.”

“It will be _epic_!” North said confidently, striding back over to the head of the table and clapping his hands. A yeti brought in a tray with four cups of something hot and one of something cool, and North thanked him. Drinks were handed out, North proposed a toast with five different mugs, and Jack went along with it. The meetings usually ended up like this anyway.

.

After Sandy finally fell asleep for the third time, it was decided that the meeting was officially over for this month. They left their chairs behind, and if Jack slowed down just enough to wait for Bunnymund, well... he was subtle enough about it, wasn't he?

“So, uh... going stag, huh?” Wow, ok, way to be awkward, Frost. Also, way to seem too hopeful. North had told him what their centres were and what they meant. Like North could sense Wonder and Jack could sense Fun, Bunnymund was the Guardian of Hope, and if his centre was anything like Jack's, he could smell Hope a mile away. Jack probably reeked of it. He wondered if there was anything like hope deodorant, and if he should invest in it.

Bunnymund shrugged. “Yeah. No one to really go with,” he said. “How about you?”

Jack blinked. “Me? Oh. Oh, yeah, uh... me too, actually. Going stag.”

Bunnymund gave him an odd look, sort of a frown, something confused. “Really? Woulda thought, you know... you and Tooth...”

Jack stared at him in puzzlement. Him and Tooth? Then it clicked, and the part of him that had never really grown out of the cootie stage went _“Ew!”_ very loudly in his mind. He kept it down, though. “No. No, _definitely_ not. Nuh-uh.” He cleared his throat, feeling decidedly awkward. “So, uh... see you at the party?”

“Guess so,” Bunnymund said, brushing past him with a nod of his head and a smile. Jack tried not to stare at... at everything: tail, broad back, thick, strong thighs... he wasn't very good at it.

Ugh, why did a giant rabbit have to be so _hot_?

.

“I can't believe you're doing this, North.” The Tooth Fairy folded her arms, wings buzzing with a hint of annoyance. North grinned.

“Is simple plan, yes?” he asked, placing his hands behind his back. Toothiana huffed and dropped a little in the air.

Sandy gave North a very shrewd look. Symbols flickered above his head: Jack and Bunnymund kissing, then a line through it, followed by a spotlight on North.

“Is not because I am showing off,” North said breezily. “Is for Jack and Bunny!”

“We'd agreed that the ball wasn't going to happen anymore,” she murmured. “Not since...”

North sighed. They all remembered the last time vividly well, and wished they didn't. The eve of one of the final battles of the Dark Ages, the battle where they'd lost Ombric and... He shook his head.

“It will be good for Jack,” he said. “He is needing this. He is needing appreciation. And winter solstice is his birthday, too!”

“Really?” Toothiana bit her lip. “What do you think, Sandy?”

Dreamsand shimmered and formed a question mark, then a thumbs up, as the Guardian of Dreams shrugged non-committally.

“Fine then, we'll help,” Toothiana said. North beamed at her, and drew them both into his enthusiastic hug.

.

“I heard you are needing clothes?”

Jack's eye narrowed. “Uh-huh?” He didn't exactly trust North's taste in wardrobe. He'd probably end up with some Russian monstrosity that offered no room for movement and had too much fur. And he _refused_ to wear a hat like North's.

He was pleasantly surprised, though, when North led him to a room with a large mirror, an immense wardrobe and his outfit on a hanger, waiting for him.

“Oh.” His eyes widened. North chuckled.

“I had a little help.” he admitted. “From Toothy. She is good with clothes.”

“Can I try it on?” Jack asked. North laughed.

“Of course, is yours! I will be outside!” he said, turning on his heel and leaving. Jack reached out a hand and touched the fabric, grinning slightly.

It looked _good_.

Feeling a little self-concious, he stripped, dumping his usual clothes in a heap on the floor. First came the shirt, the purest white he'd ever seen, with tiny mother-of-pearl buttons. The collar was high and the sleeves tight, coming down to his hands. It took him a moment to realise there were thumbholes, and he chuckled to himself.

“Goth gloves? Really, Tooth?”

Next came the pants, which were as tight as his usual pair, only longer and made of dark, _dark_ blue velvet. They were comfortable stretching with his movements as he bent his knees, his feet still free enough to feel good despite the stirrups beneath the arches. He flexed his toes and bit his lip.

Finally came the waistcoat, double-breasted, but diagonally. It was a shade lighter than his hoodie, and also made of velvet, apparently. The buttons were silver – he had a sneaky suspicion they were the real deal. It fitted perfectly, following the shape of his body. When he looked in the mirror, he barely recognised himself.

What a difference good, well-made clothes could make.

As he watched, frost crept up to his knees and along his arms, making elegant patterns along the hem and collar of his waistcoat. He'd never really looked at himself in the mirror and thought of himself as handsome before. He grinned. What would Mr Grumpy-pants make of this, then?

The thought made him blush and groan. Yeah, right. Like Bunnymund would actually look at him twice, even like this. “It's all in your head, Frost,” he mumbled to himself. “Give it up.”

It didn't help.

He jumped when someone knocked on the door, and cleared his throat. “Come in!”

North poked his head round the door and beamed. “It is suinting you!” he declared, striding back in the room. “But is not done.”

Jack frowned. “Not done? What...?”

With a dramatic flourish, North produced something from behind his back. It was a soft velvet cloak, midnight blue, with a silver clasp shaped like two snowflakes. He swallowed.

“North, I...”

“Try it!”

Jack took the garment and swung it around his shoulders, doing up the clasp and tugging up the hood. It was deep and comforting, a barrier he could retreat into. It looked amazing.

As he watched, once more his icy powers decided to lend themselves to embroidery. Semi-transparent snowflake patterns spread across the velvet, shimmering whenever they caught the light. He swallowed.

“Thank you...” he breathed. North merely smiled and placed a huge hand on his shoulder.

“You look like winter prince,” he said, chuckling. Jack dipped his head. He almost felt he didn't deserve to be dressed like this. Here he was, a scruffy winter sprite, once a lowly settler's son... now he looked like winter royalty. It was surreal.

He'd never been more grateful.

.

When Jack landed on the roof of Santoff Claussen, leaving the snow and icy wind behind him as he slipped into the workshop's magical wards, he felt he needed to moment to gain some composure. For all his bravado, the idea of walking into a room full of people, only four of which he actually knew, and _mingling_ was simply horrifying. As was the idea of being pathetic enough to have to latch onto Toothiana, North or Sandy for the whole evening (not Bunnymund, no, that would be _way_ too embarrassing).

He took a deep breath.

That was when a trapdoor opened at his feet, shifting the snow, and a large, furry face peered out. Jack yelped, leaping back.

Phil looked decidedly unimpressed, and uttered something that sounded questioning in Yetish. Jack huffed, running a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm coming,” he muttered. Well, he couldn't hang out here anymore, could he? Gripping his staff tightly, he gripped the trapdoor and waited for Phil to descend before following, trying to gather his meagre crumbs of courage into something resembling a whole cookie of bravery. It wasn't that easy.

The pat on the shoulder made him jump. The twitch of Phil's beard was the only thing that told Jack he was smiling encouragingly, but it was enough. He smiled back, took another deep breath, and headed towards the hall.

.

The first thing that hit him was the heat. It was _warm_. The mixture of large fireplace, a huge amount of candles and the compactness of so many bodies made it stuffy just walking through the door. The next thing was the smells: the cinnamon and ginger of pastries, the richness of chocolate, the freshness of mint and pine. Then came the colours. North had, it seemed, excelled himself when it came to decorations: there were ripe red holly berry garlands everywhere, pine sprigs, pine cones, and an immense Christmas tree in a corner, bedecked with candles and gorgeous crystal baubles that shimmered between red and gold.

The one thing that didn't hit him, though, was the noise. It was eerily quiet, and that was when he realised that the party-goers, to a person, were all staring at him in utter silence.

No pressure.

He clutched his staff tightly to his chest and swallowed. He could now hear, muffled by hands, the sounds of whispering. These were, however, drowned by the clumping of sturdy boots and the delicate thrum of iridescent wings, and Jack had never been so glad to see North and Tooth in his whole life.

“Jack!” North exclaimed, pulling the boy into a bear hug. Toothiana giggled and gave Jack her own hug when North finally let him go. And just like that, the  
silent bubble burst and everyone went back to their previous conversations. Some still snatched looks his way, but Jack found he didn't really care anymore.

“Well, that was... awkward,” he said.

“You're still a novelty, Jack,” said Toothiana with a hint of pride. “The new Guardian of Childhood. You're going to be the talk of the party, you know.”

Jack attempted a grin. It was wobbly at best. “You look good,” he offered to Toothiana. She preened a little, fluffing up her feathers, which had changed style completely. Instead of her usual all-over covering of shimmering green, blue and purple, she sported a deep purple and black evening gown style, long flowing feathers that rustled when she moved, with more that came up like boots and opera gloves. He'd had no idea she could change her plumage like that.

“Thank you,” she said. “You look very handsome too, Jack.”

He felt his face chill somewhat, and his grin went from wobbly to sheepish. He stumbled forward when North slapped him on the back.

“It will be fine! Now, come to see buffet!”

Jack let North lead the way between the throng of people, nodding his head at anyone who looked his way. Then he stopped. He stared. _Whoa_.

Bunnymund was standing there, looking... incredible. He was wearing, well, _vest_ would have been too restrictive a word, but _waistcoat_ didn't do it justice either. It was a sleeveless jacket with wide, dark seams that did everything to accentuate the natural, flowing lines of Bunnymund's body. They followed, on silvery-grey, his contours, showing off his broad shoulders and strong thighs in the most glorious way possible. He'd also forgone his usual leather foot-wrappings for smart spats that left his toes free, and, well... Jack hadn't known spats did something for him before this evening. He swallowed.

It wasn't fair to look that attractive.

“Evening,” Bunnymund said with a nod of his head. Jack started slightly, blinking rapidly to get his head away from thoughts that it wasn't appropriate to have in pants this revealing. He grinned sheepishly, reaching absently up to brush the frost off his cheeks.

“Hi there,” he replied. He sidled over and distracted himself with the table. It didn't really work, despite the layout being decidedly opulent, not when Bunnymund was so close and looked so hot. “Anything good?”

Bunnymund raised his glass. “Booze is good,” he said. “Though I was expecting North to go all out on this.”

Jack's face was an eloquent wince. “You know I don't drink.”

“Two pot screamer,” Bunnymund teased with a chuckle, taking a sip of what looked like some sort of champagne from a delicate crystal flute. Jack's eyes went to Bunnymund's paws, and he marvelled at how delicate they truly were: the way they held eggs softly but firmly, the light strokes they made with brushes... He wondered how those fingerpads would feel on his skin...

He blinked again and grabbed a plate, his grin widening with nerves. “Well, I guess I'll just try everything!” he announced, and hastily began piling his plate with a bit of everything, most of which was terra incognita for Jack's gastronomic knowledge. Bunnymund chuckled again.

“Right, well, I'm gonna go mingle. Catch you later, Ice Block.” And with that, he disappeared into the crowd, leaving Jack with a full plate of food he didn't really want, very much alone.

.

North peered around the head of the yukionna he was speaking with. He was trying for subtle, and failing at it spectacularly, enough that the snow maiden frowned and walked off. North didn't exactly care, not when the evening was not going as he intended. He had been certain Jack and Bunnymund would have continued talking quite amicably for the whole evening. He'd seen Bunnymund's look when he'd set eyes on Jack, and he'd seen the look more than reciprocated... it was infuriating.

“Something on your mind?”

North half-turned. Toothiana had one raised eyebrow, her arms folded across her breast as as she hovered beside him.

“It appears that snappy new outfit is not enough,” he said. “More desperate measures are to be taken.”

He, of course, didn't see Toothiana wince slightly.

“So... what do you have in mind?” she asked. North clapped his hands and rubbed them together, a grin spreading over his face, making his beard twitch.

“I will be needing fairies,” he announced.

.

Jack picked at his food dejectedly, moping around the Christmas tree and trying his best not to make eye contact with anyone. He could see a couple of minor nature spirits and folkloric creatures eyeing him and giggling amongst themselves, and he tried to ignore them. Not far from them, a groundhog wearing the top half of a tuxedo was regaling a group of bored looking fae with a story that was mostly too loud and too slurred, waving his glass around hazardously. Jack tried to fight down the anxiety welling in him, but it was hard. This was fast becoming unbearable. As much as Jack wanted company, this wasn't exactly the kind of company he wanted. Small gatherings with close friends with talking and jokes and games were fine, but this... this wasn't what he wanted at all.

He popped something in his mouth, and was pleased to taste something he liked. Tempura prawns were always good.

He could probably leave discreetly enough if he tried. It wouldn't be too hard, it wasn't as if he was the life of the party, after all. His friends didn't seem bothered with him, and, well... he wasn't about to shadow them like a needy puppy. He was better than that.

Abandoning his plate on a nearby small table, he shifted the weight of his staff in order to clutch it to his chest and began weaving his way through the throng. He was almost at the door.

He heard the jangle too late to save himself.

He pitched forward with a yelp, and found himself pressed to a chest. A chest which he stared at for a moment, before looking up. Then he gulped.

“Hey,” he squeaked. Bunnymund raised an eyebrow.

“Hey yourself.”

It was like they'd found the eye of the storm. Everything around them was far away, something not worth even the slightest bit of attention. Bunnymund was _right there_ , in front of him, and he still hadn't taken his paws away from Jack's elbows where he'd grabbed to steady him. The Pooka was tall and solid and gorgeous, smelling of new grass and fresh hay and just the slightest hint of chocolate. It was a dizzying scent, something that ploughed into Jack like it was physical. His arms ached to rise up and wrap around that strong torso, longed to pull himself towards Bunnymund, press in close, reach up and...

Bunnymund let go of him, and Jack thought he'd sob with bereavement.

“So. Uh...” Ok, brain. Great time to short-circuit. _Object of affection less than a foot away, what do?_ “I'll just... leave you to the party.”

He began to back away, an apologetic grin fixed in place, and found he couldn't move more than a pace away. Something was blocking him. He turned, pressed a hand to the air and blinked. It was like a forcefield holding him in place.

To his right, someone giggled. He looked, and it was Toothiana. Both he and Bunnymund were gathering spectators now, onlookers both curious and eager. Jack gulped again. Bunnymund, however, was looking up with a wide scowl.

“Bloody ace,” he muttered. Jack looked up, following his gaze.

“Mistletoe?”

North's booming laugh was the next thing to be heard. “Is enchanted mistletoe!” he said. “You will not be able to move until you kiss!”

Jack's face froze from cheekbones to jawline. _This couldn't be happening._

Everyone was gawking now, no exceptions, some with a decidedly predatory look, as if this were the best entertainment they were going to get at this party, others with mere curiosity. Jack turned to Bunnymund, trying to ignore the staring, the physicality of it, touching him like something slimy. The Pooka's face had clouded over, his eyebrows bunched together in a typical frown. Jack's breath caught in his chest.

“C'mon, Ice Block, let's get this over with.”

Jack took a deep breath. The way Bunnymund spoke, like this was some sort of _chore_ , the way everyone was staring in anticipation, whispers rippling through the crowd like someone had dropped a pebble shaped like a conversation starter, and the idea that his only ever kiss with Bunnymund would be like this, a mere obligation because of some _spell_... He couldn't take that.

“NO!” he yelled, bringing the butt of his staff down with a resounding boom. A wave of ice burst forth, powerful enough to shatter the magical barrier around the mistletoe. Toothiana was blown head over heels. Bunnymund's fur turned to icy spikes. North had to shield his face with his arms. And everyone was still staring... though for a completely different reason, now.

Jack tried to slow his heart rate down, taking deep breaths. He didn't manage it. Blinking furiously, trying to fight back tears, he whirled around and left, retreating into the Workshop. He thought he heard North say, as he went, “Well, that did not go according to plan.”

.

Jack huddled in on himself, arms around his knees, staff tucked into the shape his body made. It was hard to stop the tears, no matter how he tried, and they leaked out down his face, showing his shame in thin, lukewarm tracks through the frost on his cheeks.

If they'd been alone, perhaps it would have been different. The idea of Bunnymund kissing him in front of everyone, and without even one iota of enthusiasm, was so painful it tore into his chest. He didn't want everyone to see him fall apart. Complete strangers, standing there, gaping at his heartbreak in live, glorious Technicolor... It would have been too much.

The roof was pleasantly, reassuringly cold, and silent as only a snow-laden night could be. The snowfall was light – the Pole's magical field making sure visitors from warmer climates felt ok – and it settled on his knees, his elbows, his shoulders... it didn't melt. It was comforting. If he sat there long enough, he mused, he'd probably turn into a snow sculpture. It was a better fate than heading back to the party and inevitable humiliation.

“Found you.”

Jack went rigid. He didn't even turn, not even when Bunnymund settled next to him, huffing and blowing in the cold air.

“So...”

Did he _have_ to talk? Bunnymund was terrible at small talk. Why was he even there? Jack curled further in on himself, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Listen...” Bunnymund cleared his throat. “I... I get why you got mad as a cut snake.”

Jack had always supposed that blood freezing was merely a fanciful figure of speech. He could now feel that definitely wasn't the case. He'd never felt such a sheer and complete feeling of dread before. Dread for what? He wasn't even sure of that.

“Uh-huh?” he ventured, voice tight. If Bunnymund knew already... This was going to be the 'Just Friends' Talk, wasn't it? The 'it's not you, it's me', 'you're a great guy, but I don't swing that way' speech. He swallowed, and man if he didn't seem to be doing that a lot lately, trying to force down the absolute dejection and school his feelings into something manageable, like apathy. While apathy was unpleasant, it could be dealt with far more easily.

“I can... I can understand, y'know.”

Ok, that was just puzzling. Jack remained, however, silent, waiting.

“I mean, we're different species, plus I'm a bloke as well. That thing with the mistletoe was just a joke, so yeah, I get it. She's apples.”

Jack slowly turned to face him. There were lamps nearby, shedding enough light to see by, and all Jack could do was stare. He could hardly believe his ears. Was this really happening? It didn't seem to make any sense.

“What?”

Bunnymund shrugged. “Like I said. I get it. I mean, Pooka,” he indicated himself briefly, “so...”

The hand Jack held up was enough to stop him. “Wait wait wait... you mean... you _like_ me?”

The change in Bunnymund's demeanour was fast enough to be alarming: he went from forced casualness to wary stiffness in less than a heartbeat. His nose twitched madly, his ears went flat against his skull. His entire body went into caution mode, and it almost scared Jack, how... prey-like Bunnymund looked. He wasn't used to seeing him like this.

Jack didn't say anything. He kept his gaze as steady as he could. Bunnymund took a deep breath.

“And if I did?” he murmured.

Jack _had_ to be dreaming. His eyes widened, his heart pounded out a mad beat against his ribcage and his mind went completely, utterly blank.

“I get it,” Bunnymund repeated for the umpteenth time, as if he could convince himself as well as Jack, mistaking Jack's silence for revulsion. “I'm too old and too furry. Also male. I just... Well, I understand why you wouldn't want to pash on...”

“It's not that,” Jack said quickly, finally regaining some higher functions in the mental department. “I just didn't want _that_ to be my first kiss with you.” He couldn't look at Bunnymund now. He kept his gaze on his bare feet where he'd buried his toes in the snow. It was a small comfort, as his heart rose into his mouth and he could barely breathe, waiting.

Bunnymund was silent now. It gave Jack enough resolution to go on.

“All those _people_ there, _staring_ , like it was some sort of _show_... People I didn't know. And it wasn't exactly how I imagined our first kiss to be.”

It was Bunnymund's turn to find his voice again. “You... you've imagined our first kiss?”

Jack could feel the frost creeping over his cheeks. He chuckled, more nerves than mirth. “E-extensively, actually. There's the After-chase Kiss, the Thank-you-for-helping-me-with-Easter Kiss, the Shut-up Kiss, the Rescue Kiss – I really like that one – the Stuck-in-a-cave-during-a-snowstorm Kiss...”

Jack didn't get to finish his list of kisses, which was long and pretty imaginative, because he ended up being silenced by one. It was awkward, sudden and absolutely perfect. When Bunnymund pulled back, Jack blinked, and a dopey grin spread across his features.

“I never imagined the On-a-roof-at-North's-during-a-party Kiss, to be honest.”

Bunnymund chuckled. “Could count as a Shut-up Kiss.”

“Do you want me to shut up, then?”

“When I kiss you, yeah.”

Jack's grin turned mischievous. “That means there'll be more kissing. That is good news. And there was much rejoicing.”

Bunnymund snorted, but halfway through it turned into a shiver. “Right. I think we can go back to the party now.”

“We could stay here,” Jack pointed out hopefully, the thought of returning to the party a rather horrifying one. “It's nice.”

It had stopped snowing. The Northern lights danced above them, a flowing veil hiding myriads of diamond stars. Bunnymund gave him a look of heavy scepticism, with much raising of eyebrows.

“Unlike _you_ , Frostbite, I do not have an inbuilt elemental immunity to frigid temperatures.” He raised a huge foot and wriggled his toes. “If I don't get inside soon, no more toes.”

Jack laughed. “Fair enough.”

Bunnymund got to his feet first, and offered Jack his paw. Jack looked at it for a moment, just the barest hint of hesitation, then took it, allowing himself to be easily lifted and placed on his feet by Bunnymund's superior strength. He would have been lying if he'd said it didn't sent a little pleasant shiver down his spine.

Once on his feet, Bunnymund didn't let go, all the way to the trapdoor that led back inside. It was here that Jack paused, biting his lip, kicking the snow hesitantly. 

“This... this means we're _together_ , right?” he asked. He could have kicked himself. He sounded so plaintive, so ridiculous and insecure, so vulnerable. He felt stupid for asking.

Bunnymund turned, gently pulled him forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “It does,” he murmured.

Jack felt himself relax, a balloon gently deflating. He smiled, and it was dopey again all over again; and, to be fair, who could blame him? He didn't wait to follow Bunnymund back into the warmth.

Once back inside again, Bunnymund cleared his throat. “And, er, I forgot to say earlier... You look amazing. Really.”

Jack stumbled, clutching his staff to his chest. “R-really?”

“Yeah.” Those flat ears and that cautious tone... Bunnymund sounded incredibly embarrassed. Jack chuckled to himself.

“Thank you,” he said, catching up enough to press his shoulder to Bunnymund's arm. “You look very handsome too.”

Bunnymund hummed, squeezing Jack's hand gently. They wavered at the door to the party hall, the hum coming from inside making them falter. The Pooka cleared his throat.

“You know... we could shoot through. Be a pair of pikers.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Um... does that mean skip dessert?”

Bunnymund chuckled. “Pretty much.”

Jack reached up and kissed him, feeling slightly exhilarated. He could _do_ that. He had the unspoken permission to just step forward and press his lips to Bunnymund's. It made him feel light-headed.

“I like that idea.”


End file.
